Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Charlie Dunbar Broad was a leading contributor to analytic philosophy of the twentieth century, known not so much for any startlingly original doctrines he propounded as for his formidable powers of distinction, analysis, and argument. Born in London, he was educated at Dulwich College and Cambridge. He entered Cambridge in 1905, first studying physics and chemistry in the natural science tripos and then switching to philosophy in the moral science tripos. The influence of Russell and Moore at Cambridge was then very strong and shows itself in Broad's work (see RUSSELL and moore). He published his dissertation as Perception, Physics, and Reality in 1914 . For a period of years beginning in 1911 he served as G. F. Stout's assistant in St. Andrews, and in 1920 he was appointed professor at the University of Bristol, where he gave the course of lectures in philosophy for natural science students that became Scientific Thought . In 1922 he delivered the Tarner Lectures, subsequently published as The Mind and Its Place in Nature , and was invited to succeed McTaggart as lecturer at Cambridge. After McTaggart's death in 1925, he oversaw the publication of the second volume of McTaggart's The Nature of Existence , which served as the stimulus for writing his own monumental Examination of McTaggart's Philosophy . (This is the book of choice for any metaphysician who is sentenced to ... log in or subscribe to read full text