Enciclopedia Cattolica

MEYERSON, EMILE

Meyerson, Émile

Volume VIII · p. 552 · 1952

English translation · Testo originale italiano

MEYERSON, Emile. - Pensatore polacco, n. a Lublino nel 1859, m. a Parigi il 4 dic. 1933. Svolse in Francia tutta la sua attività, dedicata alla filosofia della scienza.
MEYERSON, Emile. - Pensatore polacco, n. a Lublino nel 1859, m. a Parigi il 4 dic. 1933. Svolse in Francia tutta la sua attività, dedicata alla filosofia della scienza.

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

MEYERSON, Émile. Polish thinker, b. in Lublin in 1859, d. in Paris on 4 Dec. 1933. He carried out his entire intellectual activity in France, devoted to the philosophy of science.

Principal works: Identité et réalité (Paris 1905); De l'explication dans les sciences (2 vols., ibid. 1922); La déduction relativiste (ibid. 1925); Du cheminement de la physique (3 vols., ibid. 1931); Réel et déterminisme dans la physique quantique (ibid. 1937). Opposing positivism, M. defended the ontological and explanatory value of science, which does not stop at the mere enunciation of laws but also applies the principle of causality, affirming the permanence in time of an unchanging reality beneath apparent becoming. This rationalization of the real, however, can never be complete, given the existence of the irreducible irrational within the scheme of pure mechanism.

BIBL.: A. Metz, Qu'est-ce que la science? La réponse d'E. M. (Cahiers de la nouvelle journée, 5), Paris 1926, pp. 97-128; D. Parodi, Du cheminement de la pensée selon M., in Rev. de mét. et mor., 39 (1932), pp. 387-415; M. A. Denti, Scienza e filosofia in M., Florence 1940; F. Amerio, Epistemologia, Brescia 1948, pp. 369-372 (bibliography).