Michael Friedman (philosopher)

Friedman earned his A.B. from Queens College, City University of New York in New York in 1969 and his PhD from Princeton University in 1973.[5] He is now Frederick P. Rehmus Family Professor of Humanities at Stanford University.[6] Before moving to Stanford in 2002, Friedman taught at Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Illinois, Chicago, and Indiana University. He is married to the philosopher Graciela de Pierris, who is an associate professor of philosophy at Stanford.[7]

Friedman has been a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences since 1997.[8] Four of his articles have been selected as among the "ten best" of their year by the Philosopher's Annual.

Friedman's initial work was on the nature of scientific explanation and the philosophy of physics. His first book on Foundations of Space-Time Theories published by Princeton University Press in 1983 won the Matchette Prize (what is now known as the "Book Prize") from the American Philosophical Association, to recognize work by a younger scholar. It also won the Lakatos Award from the London School of Economics to recognize outstanding work in philosophy of science.

Kant and the Exact Sciences was described in Philosophical Review as "a very important book," "required reading for researchers on the relation between the exact sciences and Kant's philosophy."[9]

Hans Sluga described Friedman's 2000 book on Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger as "eye-opening" and "ambitious," shedding new light on the split between analytic philosophy and Continental philosophy.[10]

In his book Dynamics of Reason, Friedman "provides the fullest account to date not only of [his] neo-Kantian, historicized, dynamical conception of relativized a priori principles of mathematics and physics, but also of the pivotal role that [he] sees philosophy as playing in making scientific revolutions rational."[11]

Alan Richardson; Eric Winsberg; Andrew Janiak; Quayshawn Spencer

• Faculty profile at Stanford University