Joseph D. Sneed (September 23, 1938 – February 7, 2020) was an American
physicist, and
philosopher
A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...
at the
Colorado School of Mines.
Early life
He was born in
Durant, OK
Durant () is a city in Bryan County, Oklahoma, United States that serves as the headquarters of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. The population was 18,589 in the 2020 census. Durant is the principal city of the Durant Micropolitan Statistical A ...
. His father, Dabney W. Sneed, was a civil servant with the Postal Service and later an architect for the Federal Housing Administration. His mother, Sallabelle Atkison Sneed, was a homemaker and elementary school teacher.
[Colorado School of Mines]
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Education
He attended public schools in Durant, OK and Tulsa, OK. He received a B.S. in physics from Rice University in 1960, an MS in physics from the University of Illinois in 1962 and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
in 1964. His mentor at Stanford was Patrick Suppes. His view of the nature of philosophy was shaped at Stanford by Donald Davidson. At Stanford he was also a student of Richard C. Jeffrey.[
]
Work
With his book ''The Logical Structure of Mathematical Physics'', published in 1971, and other contributions to the philosophy of science Sneed founded the structural theory of the empirical sciences. He was influenced by and influenced Wolfgang Stegmuller
Wolfgang is a German male given name traditionally popular in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The name is a combination of the Old High German words ''wolf'', meaning "wolf", and ''gang'', meaning "path", "journey", "travel". Besides the regula ...
and Thomas Kuhn.
Bibliography
* J. D. Sneed, ''The Logical Structure of Mathematical Physics''. Reidel, Dordrecht, 1971 (revised edition 1979).
* W. Balzer, C. U. Moulines, J. D. Sneed, ''An Architectonic for Science: the Structuralist Approach''. Reidel, Dordrecht, 1987.
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 nevert ...
* List of American philosophers
References
Further reading
* C. M. Dawe, ''The Structure of Genetics'', PhD dissertation. University of London. 1982.
External links
Webpage of J. Sneed at the Colorado School of Mines
1938 births
Living people
20th-century American philosophers
21st-century American philosophers
Colorado School of Mines faculty
Rice University alumni
21st-century American physicists
Analytic philosophers
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