Filmer Stuart Cuckow Northrop (November 27, 1893 in

Janesville, Wisconsin Janesville is a city in Rock County, Wisconsin, United States. It is the county seat and largest city in the county. It is a principal municipality of the Janesville, Wisconsin, Metropolitan Statistical Area and is included in the Madison–Jan ...

– July 22, 1992 in

Exeter, New Hampshire Exeter is a town in Rockingham County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 16,049 at the 2020 census, up from 14,306 at the 2010 census. Exeter was the county seat until 1997, when county offices were moved to neighboring Brentwood. ...

) was an American

legal philosopher Philosophy of law is a branch of philosophy that examines the nature of law and law's relationship to other systems of norms, especially ethics and political philosophy. It asks questions like "What is law?", "What are the criteria for legal val ...

and influential

comparative philosopher general linguistics, the comparative is a syntactic construction that serves to express a comparison between two (or more) entities or groups of entities in quality or degree - see also comparison (grammar) for an overview of comparison, as well ...

. After receiving a B.A. from

Beloit College Beloit College is a private liberal arts college in Beloit, Wisconsin. Founded in 1846, when Wisconsin was still a territory, it is the state's oldest continuously operated college. It is a member of the Associated Colleges of the Midwest and ...

in 1915, and an MA from

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...

in 1919, he went on to

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

where he earned another MA in 1922 and a Ph.D. in 1924. At Harvard, Northrop studied under

Alfred North Whitehead Alfred North Whitehead (15 February 1861 – 30 December 1947) was an English mathematician and philosopher. He is best known as the defining figure of the philosophical school known as process philosophy, which today has found applic ...

. He was appointed to the Yale faculty in 1923 as an instructor in Philosophy, and later was named professor in 1932. In 1947 he was appointed Sterling Professor of Philosophy and Law. He chaired the Philosophy department from 1938 to 1940 and was the first Master of

Silliman College Silliman College is a residential college at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, named for scientist and Yale professor Benjamin Silliman. It opened in September 1940 as the last of the original ten residential colleges, and contains buil ...

, from 1940 to 1947. He was the author of twelve books and innumerable articles on all major branches of philosophy. Chapter-length studies of seven of these books can be found in Fred Seddon’s ''An Introduction to the Philosophical Works of F. S. C. Northrop''. His most influential work,

The Meeting of East and West ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in ...

, was published in 1946 at the aftermath of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

. Its central thesis is that East and West both must learn something from each other to avoid future conflict and to flourish together. His jurisprudential work primarily concerned sociological jurisprudence. F.S.C. NORTHROP, THE COMPLEXITY OF LEGAL AND ETHICAL EXPERIENCE (1959) Northrop was a regular attendee of the Macy Cybernetics Conferences in the 1940s and 1950s. In 1962, he gathered some of the key participants from those conferences (including

Warren Sturgis McCulloch Warren Sturgis McCulloch (November 16, 1898 – September 24, 1969) was an American neurophysiologist and cybernetician, known for his work on the foundation for certain brain theories and his contribution to the cybernetics movement.Ken Aizawa ...

and

Donald MacCrimmon MacKay Donald MacCrimmon MacKay (9 August 1922 – 6 February 1987) was a British physicist, and professor at the Department of Communication and Neuroscience at Keele University in Staffordshire, England, known for his contributions to information theor ...

) at
Wenner Gren Foundation Symposium
on the topic o
The Determination of the Philosophy of a Culture
Northrop was personally acquainted with and close to a great number of leading figures in philosophy, politics, and science. These included G. H. Hardy,

Bertrand Russell Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, ar ...

Ludwig Wittgenstein Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian- British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He is cons ...

Erwin Schrödinger Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger (, ; ; 12 August 1887 – 4 January 1961), sometimes written as or , was a Nobel Prize-winning Austrian physicist with Irish citizenship who developed a number of fundamental results in quantum theo ...

Hermann Weyl Hermann Klaus Hugo Weyl, (; 9 November 1885 – 8 December 1955) was a German mathematician, theoretical physicist and philosopher. Although much of his working life was spent in Zürich, Switzerland, and then Princeton, New Jersey, he is ass ...

Norbert Wiener Norbert Wiener (November 26, 1894 – March 18, 1964) was an American mathematician and philosopher. He was a professor of mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). A child prodigy, Wiener later became an early researcher ...

Mao Zedong Mao Zedong pronounced ; also Romanization of Chinese, romanised traditionally as Mao Tse-tung. (26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976), also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the List of national founde ...

John Foster Dulles John Foster Dulles (, ; February 25, 1888 – May 24, 1959) was an American diplomat, lawyer, and Republican Party politician. He served as United States Secretary of State under President Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 to 1959 and was briefly ...

and

Mohammed Iqbal Sir Muhammad Iqbal ( ur, ; 9 November 187721 April 1938), was a South Asian Muslim writer, philosopher, Quote: "In Persian, ... he published six volumes of mainly long poems between 1915 and 1936, ... more or less complete works on philoso ...

, among many others. For instance, see the dedication to ''Man, Nature, and God''.

Bibliography

*Science and First Principles, New York: The Macmillan Company, 1931. Reprinted in 1979, Ox Bow Press. *''The Meeting of East and West: An Inquiry Concerning World Understanding'', New York: The Macmillan Company, 1946. Reprinted in 1979, Ox Bow Press. *The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities, New York: Meridian Books, Inc., 1947. Reprinted in 1983, Ox Bow Press. *(ed.) Ideological Differences and World Order: Studies in the Philosophy and Science of the World's Cultures, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1949. *The Taming of the Nations: A Study of the Cultural Basis of International Policy, New York: The Macmillan Company, 1952. Reprinted in 1987, Ox Bow Press. *With Gross, Mason W. (eds.) Alfred North Whitehead: An Anthology, New York: The Macmillan Company, 1953. *European Union and United States Foreign Policy: A Study in Sociological Jurisprudence, New York: The Macmillan Company, 1954. *The Complexity of Legal and Ethical Experience: Studies in the Method of Normative Subjects, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1959. Reprinted in 1959, Greenwood Press. *Philosophical Anthropology and Practical Politics, New York: The Macmillan Company, 1960. *''Man, Nature and God: A Quest for Life's Meaning'', The Credo Series, Planned and edited by

Ruth Nanda Anshen Ruth Nanda Anshen (June 14, 1900 – December 2, 2003) was an American philosopher, author and editor. She was the author of several books including ''The Anatomy of Evil'', ''Biography of An Idea'', ''Morals Equals Manners'' and ''The Mystery ...

, paperback 1963. New York: A Trident Press Book, Simon and Schuster, December, 1962. *With Livingston, Helen H. (ed.), Cross-Cultural Understanding: Epistemology in Anthropology. New York: Harper & Row, 1964. *The Prolegomena To a 1985 Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, OxBow Press, Woodbridge, Conn. 1985

Audio

Lecture: "Cultural Mentalities and Medical Science" delivered June 28, 1956

References

External links

* Filmer Stuart Cuckow Northrop papers (MS 627). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library

{{DEFAULTSORT:Northrop, Filmer 1893 births 1992 deaths 20th-century American philosophers Beloit College alumni Harvard University alumni People from Janesville, Wisconsin Yale Sterling Professors Yale University alumni Yale University faculty

Bibliography

Further reading

Audio

References

External links