astronomy

Max Black

Max Black is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Max Black rather than just read about it. In short: Max Black (February 24, 1909 – August 27, 1988) was a Russian-born British-American philosopher who was a leading figure in analytic philosophy in the years after World War II. He made contributions to the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mathematics and science, and the philosophy of art, also publishing studies of the work of philosophers such as Frege.

Key takeaways

Max Black belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Max Black to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Max Black from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Max Black (February 24, 1909 – August 27, 1988) was a Russian-born British-American philosopher who was a leading figure in analytic philosophy in the years after World War II. He made contributions to the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mathematics and science, and the philosophy of art, also publishing studies of the work of philosophers such as Frege. His translation (with Peter Geach) of Frege's published philosophical writing is a classic text.

Early life and education Black was born Max Tcherny on February 24, 1909, in Baku, then within the Russian Empire and now the capital of Azerbaijan, to a wealthy Jewish family. The family left Baku whilst he was very young, emigrating to England in 1912 after spending a short time in Paris, France. The family name was changed to Black (a direct translation of "Tcherny") in 1911 or 1912. A younger brother, Misha, became an architect. He first attended a free school in north London, but at age nine was awarded a scholarship to Dame Alice Owen's School, where he remained until the age of eighteen. He studied mathematics at Queens' College at the University of Cambridge, where he was drawn to analytic philosophy. Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, G. E. Moore, and Frank P. Ramsey were all at Cambridge at that time and were influential on much of Black's later thought. He graduated in 1930, and was awarded a fellowship for research at the University of Göttingen for a year.

Career From 1931 to 1936, Black was mathematics master at the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle. His first book was The Nature of Mathematics (1933), a critical exposition of Principia Mathematica and a critical analysis of the formalist and intuitionist schools of mathematics. Black lectured in mathematics at the Institute of Education in London from 1936 to 1940. During this time he also undertook graduate work at the University of London, being awarded a Ph.D. in 1939 for his dissertation on theories of logical positivism. In 1940 he moved to the United States and joined the Philosophy Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. In 1946, he accepted a professorship in philosophy at Cornell University. In 1948, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Black became the Susan Linn Sage Professor of Philosophy and Humane Letters at Cornell in 1954, a position he held until his retirement in 1978. He served as President of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association in 1958–1959 and as President of the International Institute of Philosophy 1981– 1984. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1963. Amongst the PhD dissertations he supervised was that of novelist William H. Gass.

Death and family Black was the elder brother of the architect Misha Black and the public relations manager Sam Black. In 1933 he married Michal (or Mabel) Landesberg (1911–1985) with whom he had a daughter and a son. Black died in Ithaca, New York age 79, from a heart attack that followed surgery for cancer.

Philosophical contributions Black made notable contributions to the metaphysics of identity. In a 1952 paper, Black presents an objection to Leibniz' law – the principle of the identity of indiscernibles that states that no two distinct things can exactly resemble each other. He does so, as Peter Forrest notes, by suggesting "there could be a universe containing nothing but two exactly resembling spheres" and that in "such a completely symmetrical universe the two spheres would be indiscernible". He is also known for his interaction theory of metaphor.

Works (1933) The Nature of Mathematics: A Critical Survey (2nd edition, 1950) (1937). "Vagueness: An exercise in logical analysis". Philosophy of Science 4: 427–55. Reprinted in R. Keefe, P. Smith (eds.): Vagueness: A Reader, MIT Press 1997, ISBN 978-0262611459 (1938). "The Evolution of Positivism" Modern Quarterly, Vol. 1. No. 1. (1939). "Relations between Logical Positivism and the Cambridge School of Analysis" Erkenntnis, Vol. 8. (1946). Critical Thinking, An Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method, Prentice-Hall Inc. Publishers, Prentice-Hall Philosophy Series, New York (revised edition, 1952) (1949). Language and philosophy: Studies in method, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-0801400407 (1954). "Metaphor", Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 55, pp. 273–94. (1954). Problems of Analysis: Philosophical Essays, Cornell University Press (1959) "Linguistic relativity: The views of benjamin lee whorf", The Philosophical Review. Vol. 68, No. 2, (April 1959). pp. 228–38. (1962). Models and metaphors: Studies in language and philosophy, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-0801400414 (1964). A Companion to Wittgenstein's Tractatus, Cornell University Press (1968). The Labyrinth of Language, Praeger (1970). Margins of Precision: Essays in Logic and Language, Cornell University Press (1975). Caveats and Critiques: Philosophical Essays in Language, Logic, and Art, Cornell University Press (1977). “More about Metaphor.” Dialectica, vol. 31, no. 3/4, 1977, pp. 431–57. JSTOR 42969757 Reprinted in: A. Ortony (ed): Metaphor and Thought. (1979) (1981). Language and Philosophy: Studies in Method, Praeger (1985). The Prevalence of Humbug and Other Essays, Cornell University Press (1990). Perplexities: Rational Choice, the Prisoner's Dilemma, Metaphor, Poetic Ambiguity, and Other Puzzles, Cornell University Press

References

Further reading Marcus, Ruth Barcan (1990). "Max Black (1909-1988)". Dialectica. 44 (1/2): 4–8. ISSN 0012-2017. JSTOR 43016695.

External links Biography at the MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive Guide to the Max Black Papers, Cornell University Library The Prevalence of Humbug, The Prevalence of Humbug and Other Essays (Cornell University Press, 1983).

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Max Black

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Max Black claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Max Black before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Max Black ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Max Black

In research: Max Black appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Max Black in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Max Black is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1909 births, 1988 deaths, 20th-century British Jews, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Max Black outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Max Black in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Max Black means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Max Black out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Max Black in simple terms?

Why does Max Black matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Max Black?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Max Black.