1891 – 1953
Hans Reichenbach was a German-American philosopher of science and a leading figure in the Berlin Circle of logical empiricism. He made foundational contributions to the philosophy of space and time, probability theory, and the logical analysis of scientific knowledge, particularly regarding Einstein's theory of relativity.
Founded the Berlin Circle (Society for Empirical Philosophy) in 1928
Developed a frequentist interpretation of probability and the concept of 'weight' for single events
Authored 'The Philosophy of Space and Time' (1928), a seminal work on the conventionality of simultaneity and geometry
Formulated the 'common cause principle' explaining statistical correlations
Advanced the pragmatic vindication of induction as a justification for inductive inference
Reichenbach was not able to recognize the Weyl method as other than an equivalent account of empirical determination of the metric
claimWe must distinguish between the radical empiricist's meaning of 'meaning' (epistemic reduction) and a more common-sensical meaning of 'meaning' (factual reference).
claimMetric geometry is neither true nor false.