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Edwin Arthur Burtt (October 11, 1892 – September 6, 1989), usually cited as E. A. Burtt, was an American philosopher who wrote extensively on the philosophy of religion. His doctoral thesis published as a book under the title The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science has had a significant influence upon the history of science that is not generally recognized, according to H. Floris Cohen.

Biography

He was born on October 11, 1892, in Groton, Massachusetts. His missionary parents took Burtt to China for several of his teenage years. He was educated at Yale University. He graduated from Yale in 1915, where he was a member of Skull and Bones. He attended Union Theological Seminary and Columbia University. He became the Susan Linn Sage Professor of Philosophy at Cornell University in 1941.

He died on September 6, 1989, in Ithaca, New York.

Work

Though he maintained throughout his life a sympathy towards religious values and beliefs, he acknowledged that his philosophy had been marked by a reaction towards what he saw as his own father's too narrow outlook. Although Burtt participated in drafting the Humanist Manifesto I, he did not work on the project further, because he lost interest after his ideas that spiritual experience is the identification with categories of space, time, causality, and other fundamental physical principles were never included in the final publications. However, in 1973 he was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto II.

Legacy

Based on his own statements, Thomas Kuhn may very well have been unaware that in building on the philosophy of Alexandre Koyré, he was in turn building on the philosophy of Burtt whose influence upon Koyré has been demonstrated as substantial.

Publications

• The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science. A Historical and Critical Essay (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner; 1924, 1925)
• The Metaphysics of Sir Isaac Newton (1925)
• Principles and Problems of Right Thinking (1928)
• Religion in an Age of Science (1930)
• The English Philosophers, from Bacon to Mill (1939)
• Types of Religious Philosophy (1939)
• The Teachings of the Compassionate Buddha (1955)
• Man Seeks the Divine: A Study in the History and Comparison of Religions (1957)
• In Search of Philosophic Understanding (1965)
• Light, Love and Life (1986)

See also

• List of science and religion scholars
• American philosophy
• List of American philosophers

Notes

1. Diane Davis Villemaire, 2002, p. 238.
2. Diane Davis Villemaire, 2002, p. 81.
3. John R. Shook (ed.), Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2005, p. 392
4. Friedman, Michael (2011). Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). "Ernst Cassirer". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford University. Retrieved 6 February 2016.
5. "Edwin Burtt, Professor And Author, Dies at 96". The New York Times. September 9, 1989. Retrieved April 24, 2011.
6. Diane Davis Villemaire, 2002, p. 63
7. Catalogue of Beta Theta Pi. J. T. Brown. 1917. Retrieved April 24, 2011.
8. A Eulogy with young life details. Retrieved March 29, 2008.
9. Diane Davis Villemaire, 2002, p. 194
10. "Humanist Manifesto II". American Humanist Association. Archived from the original on October 20, 2012. Retrieved October 18, 2012.
11. Diane Davis Villemaire, 2002, pp. 3–4

Sources

• Diane Davis Villemaire, E.A. Burtt, Historian and Philosopher: A Study of the author of The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science), Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002, ISBN 1-4020-0428-1.

External links

• Works by or about Edwin Arthur Burtt at the Internet Archive
• E.A. Burtt Document Collection at Cornell

• 1892 births
• 1989 deaths
• American philosophers of science
• Yale University alumni
• Union Theological Seminary alumni
• Cornell University faculty
• 20th-century American non-fiction writers
• 20th-century American philosophers
• Members of Skull and Bones