Edgar Arthur Singer Jr. (November 13, 1873 – April 4, 1954) was an American

philosopher Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

, professor at the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...

, and proponent of

experimentalism Experimentalism is the philosophical belief that the way to truth is through experiments and empiricism. It is also associated with instrumentalism, the belief that truth should be evaluated based upon its demonstrated usefulness. Experimentalism is ...

Life and work

Singer was a graduate student of George S. Fullerton (1839–1925) at the University of Pennsylvania, where he received his Ph.D. in psychology in 1894 with the thesis entitled "On the composite nature of consciousness." After his dissertation, he briefly taught at Harvard for

William James William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher and psychologist. The first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States, he is considered to be one of the leading thinkers of the late 19th c ...

as an instructor in the psychology laboratory. He was professor at the

from 1909 until 1943. He was an elected member of the

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS) is an American scholarly organization and learned society founded in 1743 in Philadelphia that promotes knowledge in the humanities and natural sciences through research, professional meetings, publicat ...

in 1925. His pupils included Henry Bradford Smith, Edwin Ray Guthrie Jr.,

C. West Churchman Charles West Churchman (29 August 1913 – 21 March 2004) was an American philosopher and systems scientist, who was Professor at the School of Business Administration and Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Californ ...

, Russell L. Ackoff and

Gordon Clark Gordon Haddon Clark (August 31, 1902 – April 9, 1985) was an American philosopher and Calvinist theologian. He was a leading figure associated with presuppositional apologetics and was chairman of the Philosophy Department at Butler Unive ...

. Singer believed that consciousness was a historical construct and, as such, it was not a suitable object for a scientific psychology. As an object to unify psychology research, he suggested behavior, which was observable. He denied he was the father of Behaviorism. He was not a materialist. Neither was Singer an empiricist. His epistemology for a science of psychology was self described as Empirical-Idealism. Most importantly, Singer carried on the philosophy of

Pragmatism Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that views language and thought as tools for prediction, problem solving, and action, rather than describing, representing, or mirroring reality. Pragmatists contend that most philosophical topics� ...

, which began with

Charles Sanders Peirce Charles Sanders Peirce ( ; September 10, 1839 – April 19, 1914) was an American scientist, mathematician, logician, and philosopher who is sometimes known as "the father of pragmatism". According to philosopher Paul Weiss (philosopher), Paul ...

, a conception which was greatly extended by William James and

John Dewey John Dewey (; October 20, 1859 – June 1, 1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist, and Education reform, educational reformer. He was one of the most prominent American scholars in the first half of the twentieth century. The overridi ...

, to the University of Pennsylvania. Thus informing the Department Chair of philosophy Thomas A. Cowan, C. West Churchman, and Russell L. Ackoff of the merits of describing the world functionally. One student of Ackoff, W. Curtiss Priest, continued the conception, teaching Ackoff's 1967 book ''Choice, Communication, and Conflict'' at the

Emma Willard School Emma Willard School, originally called Troy Female Seminary and often referred to simply as Emma, is an independent university-preparatory day and boarding school for young women located in Troy, New York. Located on Mount Ida, it offers grade ...

in 1971. Beginning in 2004, Priest and P. Kenneth Komoski published numerous papers under the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE, see ED-Media) extending

, which they prefer calling Functionalism, as a method to combine knowledge across the disciplines in an Internet-based hub called ''The Netting''.

Publications

* 1924, ''Modern thinkers and present problem'' * 1924, ''Mind as behavior'' * 1925, ''Fool's advice'' * 1936, ''On the contented life'' * 1948, ''In search of a way of life'' * 1959, ''Experience and reflection''

About Singer

* Clarke, F. P., & Nahm, M. C., (Eds.). (1942). ''Philosophical essays in honor of Edgar Arthur Singer Jr. '' Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. * Anonymous. (1942). Singer, Prof. Edgar Arthur Jr., in J. Cattell (ed.), ''Directory of American scholars: A biographical directory'' (pp. 762). Lancaster, PA.: The Science Press. (Third printing, 1966.) * Krikorian, Y. H. (1962). Singer's philosophy of experimentalism. ''Philosophy of Science '', Vol. 29(1), pp. 81–91 * Nahm, M. C. (1957). Edgar A. Singer Jr. and the aesthetic of empirical idealism. ''Journal of Philosophy'', Vol. 54 (14–26), pp. 584–594. * Anonymous. (1966). Singer, Edgar Arthur Jr., in ''Who was who in America''. Vol. 3, 1951–1960 (p. 789). Chicago: Marquis. (Third printing, 1966.) * Churchman, C. W. (1971). Singerian inquiring systems. In ''The design of inquiring systems: Basic principles of systems and organization''. New York: Basic Books (pp. 186–205). * Anonymous. (1977). Philosophy of science. In P. E. Peters (Ed.), ''Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science''. Vol. 22 (pp. 183–203). New York: Marcel Dekker. * Churchman, C.W. (1982a). An appreciation of Edgar Arthur Singer Jr., in C.W. Churchman, ''Thought and Wisdom'', Intersystems Publications, Seaside, Calif., Ch. 10, pp. 116–135. * Britton, G. A., & McCallion, H. (1994). An overview of the Singer/Churchman/Ackoff school of thought. ''Systems Practice'', Vol 7 (5), 487-521 * Richardson, S. M., Courtney, J. F., & Paradice, D. B. (2001). An assessment of the Singerian inquiring organizational model: Cases from academia and the utility industry. ''Information Systems Frontiers'', Vol 1, 49-62. (Abstract at http://www.kluweronline.com/issn/1387-3326/. Retrieved 1 June 2001.)

References

External links

* https://web.archive.org/web/20080820203719/http://www.pragmatism.org/dmap/apa_presidents.htm * - includes useful background on Singer
Edgar Arthur Singer
by Andrew Basden, 2005.

by

Kristo Ivanov Kristo Ivanov (born 1937-10-20) is a Swedish-Brazilian information scientist and systems scientist of ethnic Bulgarian origin. He is professor emeritus at the Department of informatics of Umeå University in Sweden. Biography Ivanov was born i ...

, an example of application of Singer's thought as represented in C. West Churchman's work. {{DEFAULTSORT:Singer Edgar Arthur Jr. 1873 births 1954 deaths 20th-century American philosophers 19th-century American philosophers Members of the American Philosophical Society