I was reading Probability and Causality: Essays in Honor of Wesley C. Salmon, and was interested to
see it included an annotated bibliography, where Salmon provides contextual
commentary regarding all of his publications up to that time (1988). The first entry was an interesting
surprise. While his post-doctoral work
was squarely in the mid-twentieth century empiricist tradition of philosophy of
science, his MA thesis in 1947 was on the topic “Whitehead’s Conception of
Freedom”, about which he comments:
“A relic, best forgotten, of the days when I was totally
committed to Alfred North Whitehead’s metaphysics.”
In his later career, when stretching his empiricist commitments
in search of a realist approach to causation, Salmon developed his own causal
"process” theory (Salmon 1984). No
mention of Whitehead, but perhaps some background inspiration?
Here’s a bit longer autobiographical excerpt from Salmon’s book on Hans Reichenbach:
“On the basis of personal
experience, I can testify to Reichenbach’s qualities both as a teacher and a
man. I was a raw young graduate student with an M.A. in philosophy from the
University of Chicago when first I went to UCLA in 1947 to work for a
doctorate. At Chicago I had been totally immersed in Whitehead’s philosophy;
ironically, Carnap was at Chicago during those years, but I never took a course
from him. My advisors barely acknowledged his existence, and certainly never
recommended taking any of his classes. Upon arrival at UCLA I was totally
unfamiliar with Reichenbach or his works, but during my first semester I was
stimulated and delighted by his course, ‘Philosophy of Nature’, based upon Atom and Cosmos. Simultaneously, I
continued my intensive studies of Whitehead’s Process and Reality. A severe intellectual tension emerged in my
mind between Whitehead, the scientifically sophisticated metaphysician, and
Reichenbach, the scientifically sophisticated anti-metaphysician.
To the best of my
recollection, the tension grew to crisis proportions when I heard Reichenbach
deliver his masterful Presidential Address, on rationalism and empiricism, to
the Pacific Division of the APA at its meeting in Los Angeles in December of
1947. This lecture was precisely what I –
as a naïve graduate student – needed to make me face the crucial question: on
what conceivable grounds could one make reasonable judgments concerning the
truth or falsity of Whitehead’s metaphysical claims? When I posed this question
to myself, as well as to teachers and fellow graduate students sympathetic to
Whitehead, I received nothing even approaching a satisfactory answer. By the end of that academic year I was a
convinced – though still very naïve – logical empiricist.”
Salmon, Wesley C. (1979). Hans Reichenbach, Logical Empiricist, Dortrecht: D. Reidel, p.8.
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