Gotthard Günther (15 June 1900 – 29 November 1984) was a German (Prussian)
philosopher.
Biography
Günther was born in
Arnsdorf
Arnsdorf is a municipality in the district of Bautzen, in Saxony, Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and th ...
,
Hirschberg im Riesengebirge,
Prussian Silesia
The Province of Silesia (german: Provinz Schlesien; pl, Prowincja Śląska; szl, Prowincyjŏ Ślōnskŏ) was a province of Prussia from 1815 to 1919. The Silesia region was part of the Prussian realm since 1740 and established as an official p ...
(modern day
Jelenia Góra
Jelenia Góra (pron. ; Polish: ; german: Hirschberg im Riesengebirge; Exonym: ''Deer Mountain''; szl, Jelyniŏ Gōra) is a historic city in southwestern Poland, within the historical region of Lower Silesia. Jelenia Góra is situated in the Low ...
,
Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...
). From 1921 to 1933, Günther studied
sinology
Sinology, or Chinese studies, is an academic discipline that focuses on the study of China primarily through Chinese philosophy, language, literature, culture and history and often refers to Western scholarship. Its origin "may be traced to th ...
and philosophy at the universities of
Heidelberg
Heidelberg (; Palatine German language, Palatine German: ''Heidlberg'') is a city in the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the river Neckar in south-west Germany. As of the 2016 census, its population was 159,914 ...
and
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...
, and wrote his doctor's thesis on
Hegel in 1933 under the guidance of
Eduard Spranger
Eduard Spranger (27 June 1882 – 17 September 1963) was a German philosopher and psychologist. A student of Wilhelm Dilthey, Spranger was born in Berlin and died in Tübingen. He was considered a humanist who developed a philosophical pe ...
. From 1935 to 1937, he worked at the institute of
Arnold Gehlen
Arnold Gehlen (29 January 1904 in Leipzig, German Empire – 30 January 1976 in Hamburg, West Germany) was an influential conservative German philosopher, sociologist, and anthropologist.
Biography
Gehlen's major influences while studyin ...
at the
University of Leipzig
Leipzig University (german: Universität Leipzig), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 Decemb ...
, publishing ''Christliche Metaphysik und das Schicksal des modernen Bewusstseins'' (Christian metaphysics and the fate of modern consciousness, together with
Helmut Schelsky in 1937). He was a member of the
Leipzig School.
In the same year, following his wife, the Jewish psychologist Dr. Marie Günther-Hendel, he emigrated from Germany first to Italy, afterwards to
Stellenbosch University
Stellenbosch University ( af, Universiteit Stellenbosch) is a public research university situated in Stellenbosch, a town in the Western Cape province of South Africa. Stellenbosch is the oldest university in South Africa and the oldest extant ...
in South Africa and, in 1940, to the United States. There he completed his system of place-valued logics and morphogrammatics. His great study ''Die philosophische Idee einer nicht-Aristotelischen Logik'' (“The philosophical concept of a non-Aristotelian logic”) went to print in 1957 (Hamburg, Meiner). As a research professor, he joined the department of
electrical engineering at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univ ...
in 1960, working together with
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 ( ...
,
Heinz von Foerster
Heinz von Foerster (German spelling: Heinz von Förster; November 13, 1911 – October 2, 2002) was an Austrian American scientist combining physics and philosophy, and widely attributed as the originator of Second-order cybernetics. He was twice ...
,
Humberto Maturana
Humberto Maturana Romesín (September 14, 1928 – May 6, 2021) was a Chilean biologist and philosopher. Many consider him a member of a group of second-order cybernetics theoreticians such as Heinz von Foerster, Gordon Pask, Herbert Brün ...
and others. In 1962, he published ''Cybernetic ontology and transjunctional operations''. Later he lectured at the
University of Hamburg
The University of Hamburg (german: link=no, Universität Hamburg, also referred to as UHH) is a public research university in Hamburg, Germany. It was founded on 28 March 1919 by combining the previous General Lecture System ('' Allgemeines Vo ...
until he died in that city, in 1984 at the age of 84.
According to Isaac Asimov, who considered Gunther "a good friend," Gunther "felt that civilization was a product of the Old World and could not flourish indigenously in the New."
[''In Memory Yet Green.'' Isaac Asimov. 1979. p. 605.] Asimov noted that Gunther thus "maintained
hat
A hat is a head covering which is worn for various reasons, including protection against weather conditions, ceremonial reasons such as university graduation, religious reasons, safety, or as a fashion accessory. Hats which incorporate mecha ...
when Old World civilization was transplanted to the New World, a distortion was introduced and one of the ways in which this distortion was evidenced was by the peculiar American invention of science fiction, which was not to be confused with earlier European ventures in the field (i.e., Jules Vernes)."
Work and legacy
Günther's work was based upon
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (; ; 27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a German philosopher. He is one of the most important figures in German idealism and one of the founding figures of modern Western philosophy. His influence extends ...
,
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger (; ; 26 September 188926 May 1976) was a German philosopher who is best known for contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. He is among the most important and influential philosophers of the 20th ce ...
and
Oswald Spengler
Oswald Arnold Gottfried Spengler (; 29 May 1880 – 8 May 1936) was a German historian and philosopher of history whose interests included mathematics, science, and art, as well as their relation to his organic theory of history. He is best kno ...
. He developed a trans-
Aristotelian logical approach (omitting the ''
tertium non datur
In logic, the law of excluded middle (or the principle of excluded middle) states that for every proposition, either this proposition or its negation is true. It is one of the so-called three laws of thought, along with the law of noncontradi ...
''). Günther's
transclassical logic was the attempt to combine improved results of modern dialectic with formal logic. His focus on the philosophical problem of the "Du" ("You"/"Thou") was trailblazing. He also contributed to the fields of
cybernetics and to both natural and social sciences, especially to
sociology
Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of empirical investigation an ...
.
His œuvre (body of work), in German and English, is quite substantial. An overview can be gathered from his three volumes, helping make dialectics operationable (see below). He was of influence in the areas of philosophy, cybernetics, mathematics, and sociology. As of 2004, the Gotthard Günther Research Center (“Gotthard-Günther-Forschungsstelle”) is working at the
University of Klagenfurt
The University of Klagenfurt (german: Universität Klagenfurt or ''Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt'', AAU) is a federal Austrian research university and the largest research and higher education institution in the state of Carinthia. It has it ...
in Austria.
Publications
* 1933, ''Grundzüge einer neuen Theorie des Denkens in Hegels Logik''
undamentals of a Theory of Thinking in Hegel's Logic Second, expanded edition, with a new foreword. Hamburg: Meiner, 1978. .
* 1937, ''Christliche Metaphysik und das Schicksal des modernen Bewusstseins''. Leipzig: Hirzel.
* 1952, ''Uberwindung von Raum und Zeit: phantastische Geschichten aus der Welt von Morgen''. Düsseldorf: Karl Rauch.
* 1957, ''Das Bewusstsein der Maschinen: eine Metaphysik der Kybernetik''. Krefeld, Baden-Baden: Agis-Verlag. Second, expanded edition 1963. Third edition as ''Das Bewusstsein der Maschinen: eine Metaphysik der Kybernetik, mit einem Beitrag aus dem Nachlass: "Erkennen und Wollen"'', edited by Eberhard von Goldammer and Joachim Paul. Baden-Baden: Agis-Verlag, 2002. . French edition, as ''La conscience des machines: une métaphysique de la cybernétique; suivi de Cognition et volition'', third edition, edited by Eberhard von Goldammer and Joachim Paul, translated by Françoise Parrot and Engelbert Kronthaler, Paris: l'Harmattan, 2008.
* 1959, ''Idee und Grundriss einer nicht-Aristotelischen Logik, Bd. 1. Die Idee und ihre philosophischen Voraussetzungen''.
dea and Outline of a Non-Aristotelian Logic, vol. 1: The Idea and Its Philosophical Postulates Hamburg: F. Meiner. Second, revised edition, Hamburg: F. Meiner, 1978. Third edition, as ''Idee und Grundriss einer nicht-Aristotelischen Logik: die Idee und ihre philosophischen Voraussetzungen: mit einem Anhang Das Phänomen der Orthogonalität, und mit einem Fragment aus dem Nachlass Die Metamorphose der Zahl''. Hamburg: Meiner, 1991. .
* 1962, ''Cybernetic Ontology and Transjunctional Operations''. University of Illinois, Engineering Experiment Station. Technical Report no. 4. Urbana: Electrical Engineering Research Laboratory, University of Illinois.
* 1965, ''Cybernetics and the Transition from Classical to Trans-Classical Logic''. Illinois University Biological Computer Laboratory BCL Report 3.0. Urbana: Biological Computer Laboratory, University of Illinois.
* 1967, ''Logik, Zeit, Emanation und Evolution''. Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Forschung des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen. Geistwissenschaften 136. Cologne-Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag.
* 1973, Notable work: H. Fahrenbach (Hrsg). "Wirklichkeit und Reflexion, Festschrift fur Walter Schulz", Pfullingen, 1973 (187 - 210). Also published as: ''Beiträge zur Grundlegung einer operationsfähigen Dialektik". Semantic Scholar.
* 1976, ''Beiträge zur Grundlegung einer operationsfähigen Dialektik, 1'' (Contributions to the Foundation of an Operational Dialectic, 1). Hamburg: Meiner. .
* 1979, ''Beiträge zur Grundlegung einer operationsfähigen Dialektik, 2'', (Contributions to the Foundation of an Operational Dialectic, 2)
* 1980, ''Beiträge zur Grundlegung einer operationsfähigen Dialektik, 3'', (Contributions to the Foundation of an Operational Dialectic, 3)
* 1973, Notable work: H. Fahrenbach (Hrsg). "Wirklichkeit und Reflexion, Festschrift fur Walter Schulz", Pfullingen, 1973. Also published as: ''Beiträge zur Grundlegung einer operationsfähigen Dialektik
References
Further reading
*Actual research on polycontextural theories is documented a
ThinkArt LabGlasgow, Scotland.
*A comprehensive archive of Gunther's work (mainly out of print) is made accessible b
*A first insight into the terminology of Gunther's work is offered by the interactiv
External links
website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gunther, Gotthard
1900 births
1984 deaths
People from Karkonosze County
People from the Province of Silesia
Cyberneticists
Leipzig University alumni
Academic staff of Leipzig University
German male writers
20th-century German philosophers