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Ernest Nagel was born in Slovakia in 1901. He quickly emigrated to the United States in 1911 at the age of 10.
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Nagel completed his dissertation On the Logic of Measurement for his PhD from Columbia University. Traditional ideas of a measurement where the analysis of quantity and magnitude. His view was that measurements are purely based on relations between objects. Nagel, Ernest. On the Logic of Measurement, by Ernest Nagel. Thesis (PH. D.)--Columbia university, 1931., 1930. -
In cooperation with Morris R Cohen he wrote "An Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method". The book illustrated the connection of logical ideas with in the scientific method. He believed there was a specific structure to the scientific method and must be followed. Cohen, Morris R., and Ernest Nagel. An Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method. Houghton Mifflin, 1934. -
Nagel's most well known work, "The Structure of Science", focused on the nature of scientific explanations and laws. He focused on both the general and specific fields of the philosophical and scientific issues and concepts. Nagel, Ernest, The Structure of Science: Problems in the Logic of Scientific Explanation. Harcourt, Brace & World, 1961. -
Discussion of relationship between man and machine during the computer revolution. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HcNx_usHvc -
Ernest Nagel was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1977. This was hugely important because only a few philosophers had ever achieved this accomplishment. -
He died in 1985 and was posthumously inducted into the Pantheon of Skeptics.