Hilary Putnam, Giant of Modern Philosophy, Dies at 89

He was known for the breadth of his thinking, the vividness of his arguments and his penchant for self-questioning and willingness to change his mind.

Source: Hilary Putnam, Giant of Modern Philosophy, Dies at 89 – The New York Times

I met Hilary Putnam one week in May of 2002 in Santa Barbara. I was intrigued by Hilary’s work relating facts and values: here at last was a highly reputed philosopher who didn’t scoff at such ideas as continental excess. Putnam, for instance, begins his Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy by challenging the neat distinction between subjectivity and objectivity:

The idea that “value judgements are subjective” is a piece of philosophy that has gradually come to be accepted by many people as if it were a piece of common sense (Putnam 2002, 1).

That was his nice way of launching a devastating critique of this silly binary, which related to work I was doing on science and religion. I brought Putnam to UC Santa Barbara (along with Bruno Latour at the same time!…gosh, what an impudent young scholar) as part of a lecture series and book I was doing. Putnam captured our theme (and possibly my bravado) in his ever-personable manner:

No one who has the temerity to address such broad themes as “science, religion, and the human experience,” can hope to hide behind an academic façade of professional expertise (Putnam 2005, 71).

I was intrigued by the argument he presented in his lecture (and book chapter). Here’s how I ended my summary:

Putnam concludes by noting the symmetry between atheists and fundamentalists, because for both groups religious belief (or nonbelief ) is obvious; this obviousness, in his mind, betrays a simplistic notion of experience, again pointing to the centrality of rethinking human experience prior to deep consideration of science and religion (Proctor 2005, 11).

Though we only were together in person for that brief week, I took from that experience a reminder that you don’t have to sound complicated when you write about big ideas, and you don’t have to hide behind your writing either. I’m grateful for that.

Proctor, James D. 2005. “Introduction: Rethinking Science and Religion.” In Science, Religion, and the Human Experience, edited by James D. Proctor, 3–23. Oxford University Press. http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/0195175328.001.0001/acprof-9780195175325-chapter-2.
Putnam, Hilary. 2002. The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays. Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
. 2005. “The Depths and Shallows of Experience.” In Science, Religion, and the Human Experience, edited by James D. Proctor, 71–86. Oxford University Press. http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/0195175328.001.0001/acprof-9780195175325-chapter-5.