Mario Bunge

Mario Augusto Bunge (/ˈbʊŋɡeɪ/;[4] Spanish: [ˈbuŋxe]; September 21, 1919 – February 24, 2020) was an Argentine philosopher and physicist who was mainly active in Canada.

Mario Bunge
Bunge in 2007
Born(1919-09-21)September 21, 1919
Buenos Aires, Argentina
DiedFebruary 24, 2020(2020-02-24) (aged 100)
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
EducationNational University of La Plata (Ph.D., 1952)
EraContemporary philosophy
RegionWestern philosophy
SchoolAnalytic philosophy
Scientific realism
Emergentism
Critical rationalism[1]
Main interests
Philosophy of science
Philosophy of physics
Pseudoscience
Notable ideas
Systemics, sociotechnology

Biography

Early years

Bunge was born on September 21, 1919, in Buenos Aires (Argentina). His mother, Marie Herminie Müser, was a German nurse who left Germany just before the beginning of World War I.[2]:1–2 His father, Augusto Bunge, also of some German descent, was an Argentinian physician and socialist legislator.[2]:1–2 Mario, who was the couple's only child, was raised without any religious education, and enjoyed a happy and stimulating childhood in the outskirts of Buenos Aires.[2]:1–22

Wife and children

Bunge had four children: Carlos F. and Mario A. J. (with ex-wife Julia), and Eric R. and Silvia A., with his wife of over 60 years, the Argentinian mathematician Marta Cavallo.[2]:5 Mario lived with Marta in Montreal since 1966, with one-year sabbaticals in other countries.[2]:413

Studies and career

Bunge began his studies at the National University of La Plata, graduating with a Ph.D. in physico-mathematical sciences in 1952.[5] He was professor of theoretical physics and philosophy, 1956–1966, first at La Plata then at University of Buenos Aires.[5] He was, until his retirement at age 90, the Frothingham Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at McGill University in Montreal, where he had been since 1966.[6][7][5]

Bunge's students include Roger Angel, David Blitz, Mike Dillinger, Andrés Kálnay, Jean-Pierre Marquis, Dan A. Seni, Héctor Vucetich, and Miguel A. Quintanilla.

He became a centenarian in September 2019. A Festschrift was published to mark the occasion, with essays by an international collection of scholars.[8] He died in Montreal, Canada, in February 2020 at the age of 100.[9][10]

Work

Bunge was a prolific intellectual, having written more than 400 papers and 80 books, notably his monumental Treatise on Basic Philosophy in eight volumes (1974–1989), a comprehensive and rigorous study of those philosophical aspects Bunge takes to be the core of modern philosophy: semantics, ontology, epistemology, philosophy of science and ethics.[5] In his Treatise, Bunge developed a comprehensive scientific outlook which he then applied to the various natural and social sciences.

His thinking embodies global systemism, emergentism, rationalism, scientific realism, materialism and consequentialism.[11] Bunge repeatedly and explicitly denied being a logical positivist,[12] and wrote on metaphysics.[13]

An inspection of his work allows one to identify a variety of scientists and philosophers who have influenced his thought in one way or another. Among those thinkers, Bunge explicitly acknowledged the direct influence of his own father, the Argentine physician Augusto Bunge, the Czech physicist Guido Beck, the Argentine mathematician Alberto González Domínguez, the Argentine mathematician, physicist and computer scientist Manuel Sadosky, the Italian sociologist and psychologist Gino Germani, the American sociologist Robert King Merton, and the French-Polish epistemologist Émile Meyerson.[2]

In the political arena, Bunge defined himself as a left-wing liberal and democratic socialist, in the tradition of John Stuart Mill and José Ingenieros.[2]:345–347[14] He was also a supporter of the Campaign for the Establishment of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, an organisation which advocates for democratic reform in the United Nations, and the creation of a more accountable international political system.[15]

Popularly, he is known for his remarks considering psychoanalysis as an example of pseudoscience.[16] He also freely criticized the ideas of well known scientists and philosophers such as Karl Popper, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Jay Gould, and Daniel Dennett.[17]

In a review of Bunge's 2016 memoirs, Between Two Worlds: Memoirs of a Philosopher-Scientist,[2] James Alcock saw in Bunge "a man of exceedingly high confidence who has lived his life guided by strong principles about truth, science, and justice" and one who is "[impatient] with muddy thinking".[17]

Awards

Bunge was distinguished with twenty-one honorary doctorates and four honorary professorships by universities from both the Americas and Europe.[18] Bunge was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) (1984–) and of the Royal Society of Canada (1992–), and he is in the Science Hall of Fame of the AAAS.[19] In 1982 he was awarded the Premio Príncipe de Asturias (Prince of Asturias Award), in 2009 the Guggenheim Fellowship,[5][7] and in 2014 the Ludwig von Bertalanffy Award in Complexity Thinking.[19][20]

Publications (selection)
  • 1959. Causality: The Place of the Causal Principle in Modern Science. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. (Fourth edition, New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2009.)
  • 1960. La ciencia, su método y su filosofía. Buenos Aires: Eudeba. (In French: La science, sa méthode et sa philosophie. Paris: Vigdor, 2001, ISBN 2-910243-90-7.)
  • 1962. Intuition and Science. Prentice-Hall. (In French: Intuition et raison. Paris: Vigdor, 2001, ISBN 2-910243-89-3.)
  • 1963. The Myth of Simplicity: Problems of Scientific Philosophy. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
  • 1967. Scientific Research: Strategy and Philosophy. Berlin, New York: Springer-Verlag. Revised and reprinted as Philosophy of Science (1998).
  • 1967. Foundations of Physics. Berlin, Heidelberg, New York: Springer-Verlag.
  • 1973. Philosophy of Physics. Dordrecht: Reidel.
  • 1980. The Mind-Body Problem. Oxford: Pergamon.
  • 1983. "Demarcating Science from Pseudoscience," Fundamenta Scientiae 3: 369–388.
  • 1984. "What is Pseudoscience?" The Skeptical Inquirer. Volume 9: 36–46.
  • 1987. Philosophy of Psychology (with Rubén Ardila). New York: Springer.
  • 1987. "Why Parapsychology Cannot Become a Science", Behavioral and Brain Sciences 10: 576–577.
  • 1988. Ciencia y desarrollo. Buenos Aires: Siglo Veinte.
  • 1974–89. Treatise on Basic Philosophy:[21] 8 volumes in 9 parts:
    • I: Semantics I: Sense and Reference. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1974.
    • II: Semantics II: Interpretation and Truth. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1974.
    • III: Ontology I: The Furniture of the World. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1977.
    • IV: Ontology II: A World of Systems. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1979.
    • V: Epistemology and Methodology I: Exploring the World. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1983.
    • VI: Epistemology and Methodology II: Understanding the World. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1983.
    • VII: Epistemology and Methodology III: Philosophy of Science and Technology: Part I. Formal and Physical Sciences. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1985. Part II. Life Science, Social Science and Technology. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1985.
    • VIII: Ethics: the Good and the Right. Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1989.
  • 1996. Finding Philosophy in Social Science. New Haven: Yale University Press.
  • 1997. Foundations of Biophilosophy (with Martin Mahner). New York: Springer.
  • 1998. Dictionary of Philosophy. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
  • 1998. Philosophy of Science, 2 Vols. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
  • 1998. Social Science under Debate: A Philosophical Perspective. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
  • 1999. The Sociology–Philosophy Connection. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
  • 2001: Scientific Realism: Selected Essays of Mario Bunge. Edited by Martin Mahner. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
  • 2001. Philosophy in Crisis: The Need for Reconstruction. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
  • 2003. Emergence and Convergence: Qualitative Novelty and the Unity of Knowledge. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
  • 2004. Über die Natur der Dinge. Materialismus und Wissenschaft (with Martin Mahner). Stuttgart: S. Hirzel Verlag.
  • 2006. Chasing Reality: Strife over Realism. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
  • 2009. Political Philosophy: Fact, Fiction, and Vision. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
  • 2010. Matter and Mind: A Philosophical Inquiry. New York: Springer.
  • 2012. Evaluating Philosophies. New York: Springer.
  • 2012. "Does Quantum Physics Refute Realism, Materialism and Determinism?", Science & Education 21(10): 1601–1610.
  • 2013. Medical Philosophy: Conceptual Issues in Medicine. New Jersey: World Scientific Publishing Company.
  • 2016. Between Two Worlds: Memoirs of a Philosopher-Scientist. New York: Springer.
  • 2017. Doing Science: In the Light of Philosophy. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Company.
  • 2018. From a Scientific Point of View: Reasoning and Evidence Beat Improvisation across Fields. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars.

See also

References
  1. "Karl Popper and Critical Rationalism". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  2. Bunge, Mario (2016). Between Two Worlds: Memoirs of a Philosopher-Scientist. Springer Biographies. Berlin; New York: Springer-Verlag. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-29251-9. ISBN 9783319292502. OCLC 950889848.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  3. Bunge said that he "taught [himself] philosophy between 1936 and 1956" while he was a regular physics student (between 1938 and 1944), studying nuclear physics under Guido Beck (see: Mario Bunge, "Philosophy of Science and Technology: A Personal Report", Contemporary Philosophy, Volume 8: Philosophy of Latin America, pp. 245–272, edited by Guttorm Fløistad Kluwer).
  4. Mario Bunge, philosopher and physicist. McGill University on YouTube. 3 November 2015. Event occurs at 0:03. Retrieved 27 February 2020. Interview with Bunge in which the interviewer gives a pronunciation of his name.
  5. "Fellows: Mario A. Bunge". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Archived from the original on 22 June 2011. Retrieved 29 January 2010.
  6. Spitzberg, Daniel (8 November 2007). "Mario Bunge: Philosophy in flux". McGill Reporter. Archived from the original on 13 December 2007. Retrieved 29 January 2010.
  7. "Biography: Mario Bunge, PhD, FRSC". University of Ottawa. Archived from the original on 15 February 2009. Retrieved 29 January 2010.
  8. Frazier, Kendrick (January–February 2020). "Science, Philosophy, and a Lifetime of Reason: A Mario Bunge Festschrift". Skeptical Inquirer. Vol. 44 no. 1. Amherst, New York: Center for Inquiry. p. 9.CS1 maint: date format (link)
  9. "Fallece a los cien años el filósofo argentino Mario Bunge". La Vanguardia (in Spanish). 25 February 2020.
  10. "Muere a los 100 años el físico y filósofo argentino Mario Bunge". CNN en Español (in Spanish). 25 February 2020.
  11. Bunge, Mario (1989). Ethics: The Good and the Right. Treatise on Basic Philosophy. 8. Dordrecht; Boston: D. Reidel. p. xiv. doi:10.1007/978-94-009-2601-1. ISBN 9027728399. OCLC 19354927. This is the last volume of my Treatise on Basic Philosophy, on which I started to work two decades ago. It is consistent with the previous volumes, in particular with the naturalistic, dynamicist, emergentist and systemist ontology, as well as with the realistic and ratioempiricist semantics and epistemology formulated therein.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  12. Bunge 2016, pp. 113, 335: "... mainly because of the vulgar confusion between scientism and positivism, I am often regarded as a positivist despite my many criticisms of positivism. ... When [Gino] Germani invited me to take part in the panel for the conference on science and positivism that he had organized, I assaulted positivism and thus provoked Gino's anger. I had not realized that, in that milieu, positivism was confused with scientism. ... I had read some of the genuine positivists, from Comte, Mach and Duhem to Reichenbach, Carnap and Philipp Rank, and had thoroughly criticized their attempt to interpret physics in anthropocentric terms, from sensation to measurement."
  13. See, for example, volumes 3 and 4 of his Treatise on Basic Philosophy.
  14. Kary, Michael (2019). "Ethical politics and political ethics II: on socialism through integral democracy". In Matthews, Michael R. (ed.). Mario Bunge: A Centenary Festschrift. Cham: Springer-Verlag. pp. 513–534. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-16673-1_29. ISBN 9783030166724. OCLC 1109956992.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  15. "Overview: Professors". Campaign for a UN Parliamentary Assembly. Retrieved 19 April 2018.
  16. For example: Bud, Robert; Bunge, Mario (October 2010). "For and against psychoanalysis: Is psychoanalysis science or pseudoscience?". New Scientist. 208 (2780): 22–23. doi:10.1016/S0262-4079(10)62400-1. See also: Bunge, Mario (2001). "Diagnosing pseudoscience". Philosophy in Crisis: The Need for Reconstruction. Prometheus lectures. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. pp. 161–189. ISBN 1573928437. OCLC 45123524.
  17. Alcock, James (2017). "The Scientist and the Philosopher". Skeptical Inquirer. 41 (2): 58–61.
  18. Bar-Am, Nimrod; Gattei, Stefano, eds. (2017). "About the authors". Encouraging Openness: Essays for Joseph Agassi on the Occasion of his 90th Birthday. New York: Springer-Verlag. p. 568. ISBN 9783319576688.
  19. Matthews, Michael R., ed. (2019). Mario Bunge: a Centenary Festschrift. Cham: Springer-Verlag. p. 2. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-16673-1. ISBN 9783030166724. OCLC 1109956992.
  20. "Ludwig von Bertalanffy Award in Complexity Thinking". bcsss.org. Retrieved 21 September 2019.
  21. Bunge's Treatise on Basic Philosophy stands as his major achievement. It encompasses a quadrivium which he considers "the nucleus of contemporary philosophy", namely, semantics (theories of meaning and truth), ontology (general theories of the world), epistemology (theories of knowledge), and ethics (theories of value and right action). For approximately two decades, Bunge engaged in writing his magnum opus in order to investigate and synthesize contemporary philosophy in a single grand system that is compatible with the advancement of modern human knowledge both scientifically and philosophically. Treatise on Basic Philosophy: Semantics (I & II), Ontology (III-IV), Epistemology and Methodology (V-VII) Axiology and Ethics (VIII). All of these 8 volumes in 9 parts are currently in print, available under the Springer-Verlag imprint.

Further reading
  • VV.AA. (2003). Congreso-homenaxe internacional a Mario Bunge. Mos (Galicia), Grupo Aletheia. [Includes articles in Spanish by M. Bunge (Inverse problems), J. Aracil (MB and systems theory), A. Barceló (Philosophy and economics: three Bungen notions), I, Morgado (Brain, mind and philosophy), J. Mosterín (Biographical sketch of MB), M. A. Quintanilla (Instrumental rationality) y Héctor Vucetich (Quantum mechanics and realism), and in English by M. Mahner (M. Bunge's philosophy of biology)].
  • Agassi, Joseph and Robert S. Cohen (eds.) (1982). Scientific Philosophy Today: Essays in Honor of Mario Bunge. Dordrecht, D. Reidel. doi:10.1007/978-94-009-8462-2
  • Denegri, Guillermo and Gladys E. Martínez (2000). Tópicos actuales en filosofía de la ciencia. Homenaje a Mario Bunge en su 80º aniversario. Mar del Plata, Editorial Martín.
  • Marone, Luis and Rafael González del Solar (2000). "Homenaje a Mario Bunge, o por qué las preguntas en Ecología deberían comenzar con 'por qué'". In Denegri, Guillermo and Gladys E. Martínez (2000). Tópicos actuales en filosofía de la ciencia. Homenaje a Mario Bunge en su 80º aniversario. Mar del Plata, Editorial Martín. pp. 153–178.
  • Matthews, Michael R. (ed.) (2019). Mario Bunge: a Centenary Festschrift. Cham, Springer. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-16673-1
  • Serroni-Copello, Raúl (1989). Encuentros con Mario Bunge. Asociación de Investigaciones en Psicología.
  • Vacher, Laurent-Michel (1993). Entretiens avec Mario Bunge. Montreal, Liber.
  • Weingartner, Paul and Georg J. W. Dorn (eds.). 1990. Studies on Mario Bunge's Treatise. Amsterdam-Atlanta, GA, Rodopi.
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