Richard Milton Martin (12 January 1916,
Cleveland, Ohio
Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Cuyahoga County. Located along the southern shore of Lake Erie, it is situated across the Canada–United States border, Canada–U.S. maritime border ...
– 22 November 1985,
Milton, Massachusetts
Milton is a town in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States. Milton is an immediate southern suburb of Boston, Massachusetts. The population was 28,630 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census.
Milton is located in the relatively hilly ...
) was an American
logician and analytic
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 ...
.
In his Ph.D. thesis written under
Frederic Fitch, Martin discovered virtual sets a bit before
Quine, and was possibly the first non-Pole other than
Joseph Henry Woodger to employ a
mereological system. Building on these and other devices, Martin forged a
first-order theory capable of expressing its own
syntax
In linguistics, syntax ( ) is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituenc ...
as well as some
semantics
Semantics is the study of linguistic Meaning (philosophy), meaning. It examines what meaning is, how words get their meaning, and how the meaning of a complex expression depends on its parts. Part of this process involves the distinction betwee ...
and
pragmatics
In linguistics and the philosophy of language, pragmatics is the study of how Context (linguistics), context contributes to meaning. The field of study evaluates how human language is utilized in social interactions, as well as the relationship ...
(via an
event logic), all while abstaining from
set
Set, The Set, SET or SETS may refer to:
Science, technology, and mathematics Mathematics
*Set (mathematics), a collection of elements
*Category of sets, the category whose objects and morphisms are sets and total functions, respectively
Electro ...
and
model theory
In mathematical logic, model theory is the study of the relationship between theory (mathematical logic), formal theories (a collection of Sentence (mathematical logic), sentences in a formal language expressing statements about a Structure (mat ...
(consistent with his
nominalist
In metaphysics, nominalism is the view that universals and abstract objects do not actually exist other than being merely names or labels. There are two main versions of nominalism. One denies the existence of universals—that which can be inst ...
principles), and from
intensional notions such as
modality
Modality may refer to:
Humanities
* Modality (theology), the organization and structure of the church, as distinct from sodality or parachurch organizations
* Modality (music), in music, the subject concerning certain diatonic scales
* Modalit ...
.
Life and career
Richard Milton Martin was born on January 12, 1916 in Cleveland, Ohio to Frank Wade Martin and Lena Beatrice (Bieder).
From
Harvard
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher lear ...
, where he had studied under
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead (15 February 1861 – 30 December 1947) was an English mathematician and philosopher. He created the philosophical school known as process philosophy, which has been applied in a wide variety of disciplines, inclu ...
during his last year before retirement,
Martin earned an
A.B. in 1938.
He then obtained an M.A. from
Columbia (1939), and his Ph.D. from
Yale (1941).
His dissertation, supervised by.logician
Frederic Fitch,
was on “A Homogeneous System for Formal Logic.”
He was an instructor in mathematics at
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...
1942–44, then at the
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...
1944–46.
He then taught philosophy at
Bryn Mawr College
Bryn Mawr College ( ; Welsh language, Welsh: ) is a Private college, private Women's colleges in the United States, women's Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded as a ...
1946–48, 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 ...
1948–59, the
University of Texas
The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas, United States. Founded in 1883, it is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. With 53,082 students as of fall 2 ...
1959–63 and at
New York University
New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a Nondenominational ...
1963–73.
From 1973 until his retirement in 1984 he taught at
Northwestern University
Northwestern University (NU) is a Private university, private research university in Evanston, Illinois, United States. Established in 1851 to serve the historic Northwest Territory, it is the oldest University charter, chartered university in ...
, Martin also held visiting appointments at
Universitact Bonn, Yale,
Universitact Hamburg, the
New School for Social Research
The New School for Social Research (NSSR), previously known as The University in Exile and The New School University, is a graduate-level educational division of The New School in New York City, United States. NSSR enrolls more than 1,000 stud ...
, and
Temple University
Temple University (Temple or TU) is a public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related research university in Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. It was founded in 1884 by the Baptist ministe ...
.
In 1976, Martin largely retired from teaching (only giving one course per year at Northwestern from then on) becoming a research associate with
Boston University Center for the Philosophy and History of Science. He made excellent use of the resulting leisure, so that his final decade of life was by far his most productive, publishing over 100 book chapters and journal articles.
He published what Meguire describes as "the definitive treatment of his logic"
within ''Semiotics and Linguistic Structure'' (1978). The next year saw the publication of his edited volume of the writings of
Carolyn Eisele on
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 ...
.
He also helped edit, and contributed chapters to, the ''
Festschrift
In academia, a ''Festschrift'' (; plural, ''Festschriften'' ) is a book honoring a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during their lifetime. It generally takes the form of an edited volume, containing contributions from the h ...
en'' books ''The Logical Enterprise'' (1975) dedicated to Fitch, and ''Studies in the Philosophy of J. N. Findlay'' (1985). (Having been a colleague of
J. N. Findlay at Austin, Texas.)
At the time of his death, Martin served on the editorial board of eight journals and on the advisory board of the Peirce Edition Project. In 1981, he became president of the Charles S. Peirce Society. In 1984, he was elected president of the
Metaphysical Society of America, and he delivered their presidential address at
Vanderbilt University
Vanderbilt University (informally Vandy or VU) is a private university, private research university in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. Founded in 1873, it was named in honor of shipping and railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provide ...
in March 1985.
Despite having held tenure track appointments from 1948 until his retirement in 1984, the only Ph.D. thesis known to have been completed under Martin’s supervision is that of James Scoggin. Otherwise, Martin’s legacy is coextensive with his published writings.
Martin died at his home in Milton, Massachusetts, on November 22.
Ideas
"...one of the most many-sided, prolific, and scholarly of analytic philosophers."
:—Hans Burkhardt, Foreword to ''Metaphysical Foundations: Mereology and Metalogic''.
Martin was part of the first wave of American analytic philosophers; arguably, only Quine (1908–2000), Fitch (1909–1987), and
Henry Leonard (1905–1967) preceded him. His chronological elders
Nelson Goodman
Henry Nelson Goodman (7 August 1906 – 25 November 1998) was an American philosopher, known for his work on counterfactuals, mereology, the problem of induction, irrealism, and aesthetics.
Life and career
Goodman was born in Somerville, Ma ...
(1906–1998) and
Wilfrid Sellars (1912–1989) were arguably his contemporaries, as they all began their careers in earnest at about the same time, namely right after World War II. Martin's formal treatment of syntax followed
Alfred Tarski
Alfred Tarski (; ; born Alfred Teitelbaum;School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of St Andrews ''School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of St Andrews''. January 14, 1901 – October 26, 1983) was a Polish-American logician ...
; of semantics,
Rudolf Carnap
Rudolf Carnap (; ; 18 May 1891 – 14 September 1970) was a German-language philosopher who was active in Europe before 1935 and in the United States thereafter. He was a major member of the Vienna Circle and an advocate of logical positivism.
...
. Martin was generally well-disposed towards Carnap's work, contributed a long paper to the Schilpp volume on Carnap, and was seen as a disciple. Paradoxically, Martin was a
positivist and radical
nominalist
In metaphysics, nominalism is the view that universals and abstract objects do not actually exist other than being merely names or labels. There are two main versions of nominalism. One denies the existence of universals—that which can be inst ...
who also sympathized with
process theology
Process theology is a type of theology developed from Alfred North Whitehead's (1861–1947) process philosophy, but most notably by Charles Hartshorne (1897–2000), John B. Cobb (1925–2024), and Eugene H. Peters (1929–1983). Process ...
and orthodox
Christianity
Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion, which states that Jesus in Christianity, Jesus is the Son of God (Christianity), Son of God and Resurrection of Jesus, rose from the dead after his Crucifixion of Jesus, crucifixion, whose ...
.
Between 1943 and 1992, Martin published 16 books and about 240 papers (of which 179 were included in his books) on an extraordinary range of subjects, including
aesthetics
Aesthetics (also spelled esthetics) is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of beauty and taste (sociology), taste, which in a broad sense incorporates the philosophy of art.Slater, B. H.Aesthetics ''Internet Encyclopedia of Ph ...
, logic, the
foundation of mathematics
Foundations of mathematics are the logical and mathematical framework that allows the development of mathematics without generating self-contradictory theories, and to have reliable concepts of theorems, proofs, algorithms, etc. in particul ...
,
metaphysics
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines the basic structure of reality. It is traditionally seen as the study of mind-independent features of the world, but some theorists view it as an inquiry into the conceptual framework of ...
,
syntax
In linguistics, syntax ( ) is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituenc ...
/
semantics
Semantics is the study of linguistic Meaning (philosophy), meaning. It examines what meaning is, how words get their meaning, and how the meaning of a complex expression depends on its parts. Part of this process involves the distinction betwee ...
/
pragmatics
In linguistics and the philosophy of language, pragmatics is the study of how Context (linguistics), context contributes to meaning. The field of study evaluates how human language is utilized in social interactions, as well as the relationship ...
, the
philosophy of science
Philosophy of science is the branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. Amongst its central questions are the difference between science and non-science, the reliability of scientific theories, ...
,
phenomenology
Phenomenology may refer to:
Art
* Phenomenology (architecture), based on the experience of building materials and their sensory properties
Philosophy
* Phenomenology (Peirce), a branch of philosophy according to Charles Sanders Peirce (1839� ...
,
process philosophy
Process philosophy (also ontology of becoming or processism) is an approach in philosophy that identifies processes, changes, or shifting relationships as the only real experience of everyday living. In opposition to the classical view of change ...
,
theology
Theology is the study of religious belief from a Religion, religious perspective, with a focus on the nature of divinity. It is taught as an Discipline (academia), academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itse ...
,
Frege, and C.S. Peirce. Martin preached and practiced that philosophy should be done formally, by employing first-order logic, the theory of
virtual sets and
relations, and a multiplicity of
predicates, all culminating in an
event logic. Starting with the papers reprinted in his 1969 ''Belief'', Martin argued that the Frege's ''Art des Gegebensein'' was crucial to his thinking. Just what this ''Art'' entailed remains to be elucidated.
Martin was especially fond of applying his first-order theory to the analysis of ordinary language, a method he termed ''logico-linguistics''. He often referenced the work of the linguists
Zellig Harris (admiringly) and
Henryk Hiz (more critically); Martin, Harris, and Hiz all taught at Pennsylvania in the 1950s. Yet Martin was dismissive of the related theoretical work by
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American professor and public intellectual known for his work in linguistics, political activism, and social criticism. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a ...
and his MIT colleagues and students. Ironically, Martin appears to have been Chomsky's main teacher of logic; while a student at Pennsylvania, Chomsky took every course Martin taught.
Quine's ''
Word and Object
''Word and Object'', philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine's most famous work, expands on ideas in ''From a Logical Point of View'' (1953) and reformulates earlier arguments like his attack on the analytic–synthetic distinction from " Two Dogmas ...
'' cites Martin with approval, but Martin's wider impact has not been commensurate with the breadth and depth of his writings; the secondary literature on Martin consists of little more than reviews of his books.
Quotations
“Over the portals of the entrance to contemporary philosophy is writ: Enter here fully equipped with the tools of the new logic.” ''Intension'', p. 153.
“God made first-order logic and all the rest is the handiwork of man.” ''Semiotics'', p. xv.
Works
The first four titles below and the first part of ''Semiotics'' (1978) are monographs. The other titles are fairly loose collections of papers, most first published in journals.
* 1958. ''
Truth and Denotation: A Study in Semantical Theory''. University of Chicago Press.
* 1959. ''
Toward a Systematic Pragmatics'' (Studies in Logic and the Foundations of Mathematics). Greenwood Press.
* 1959. ''The Notion of Analytic Truth''. University of Pennsylvania Press.
* 1963. ''
Intension and Decision''. Prentice-Hall.
* 1969. ''
Belief, Existence, and Meaning''. New York University (NYU) Press.
* 1971. ''
Logic, Language, and Metaphysics''. NYU Press.
* 1974. ''
Whitehead's Categorial Scheme and Other Papers''. Martinus Neijhoff.
* 1978. ''
Events, Reference, and Logical Form''. Catholic University of America Press.
* 1978. ''
Semiotics and Linguistic Structure''. State University of New York (SUNY) Press.
* 1979. ''Pragmatics, Truth, and Language''. Reidel.
* 1979. ''Peirce's Logic of Relations and Other Studies''. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science.
John Benjamins.
* 1980. ''
Primordiality, Science, and Value''. SUNY Press.
* 1981. ''Logico-Linguistic Papers''. Foris (Netherlands).
* 1983. ''
Mind, Modality, Meaning, and Method''. SUNY Press.
* 1988. ''Metaphysical Foundations: Mereology and Metalogic''. Philosophia Verlag.
* 1992. ''Logical Semiotics and Mereology''. John Benjamins.
A complete bibliography of Martin's articles published in journals, conference proceedings, and books edited by others can be found in Meguire, Philip, 2005.
See also
*
American philosophy
American philosophy is the activity, corpus, and tradition of philosophers affiliated with the United States. The ''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' notes that while it lacks a "core of defining features, American Philosophy can neverthe ...
*
List of American philosophers
American philosophy is the activity, corpus, and tradition of philosophers affiliated with the United States. The ''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' notes that while it lacks a "core of defining features, American Philosophy can neverthe ...
Notes
References
*Meguire, Philip, 2005,
Richard Milton Martin: American Logician" ''Review of Modern Logic 10'': 7–65. (
Open access
Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which nominally copyrightable publications are delivered to readers free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 de ...
download).
Further reading
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Martin, Richard Milton
American logicians
20th-century American philosophers
1916 births
1985 deaths
Harvard University alumni
Columbia University alumni
Yale University alumni
Princeton University faculty
University of Chicago faculty
Bryn Mawr College faculty
University of Pennsylvania faculty
University of Texas at Austin faculty
New York University faculty
Northwestern University faculty
Boston University faculty
Temple University faculty
People from Milton, Massachusetts
Presidents of the Metaphysical Society of America