Edgar Zilsel

Edgar Zilsel (August 11, 1891 in Vienna – March 11, 1944 in Oakland, United States) was an Austrian historian and philosopher of science.

Life

Although linked to the Vienna Circle, Zilsel wrote criticizing the views of Circle members. As a Jewish Marxist he was unable to follow an academic career in Austria. He participated actively in people's education. From 1934 he taught mathematics and physics at a secondary school (Mittelschule) in Vienna.

As a philosopher, he connected Marxist views to the positivistic perspectives of the Vienna Circle. He worked on the social and historic conditions of the development of modern science.

After the Anschluss of Austria to the Third Reich in 1938 he emigrated to the United States. Zilsel taught a physical science course at Mills College in California. Following private and political disappointments he committed suicide in 1944 (or was shot by a mentally deranged student, according to a scholarly website).

Theses

Zilsel proposed The Zilsel Thesis as an explanation for the rise of Western science. Zilsel claims that the rise of capitalism led to the interaction of craftspeople with scholars. This interaction in turn led to the beginnings of early modern science. The craftspeople had been for the most part illiterate and looked down upon by the educated classes. The scholars were ignorant of practical craft activity. The intellectual theorizing of the crafts and the absorption of craft knowledge into the investigation of nature led to the development of experimental science. An example of this is William Gilbert's use of the mariner Robert Norman's practical knowledge of the compass to develop a theory of magnetism. Galileo's combination of mathematical theory and experimental practice was the culmination of this interpolation.

Another theory of Zilsel was that the rise of the notion of laws of nature in early modern science was a product of the generalization of the juridical concept of law to natural phenomena. Just as the king lays down the legal laws for the nation, God lays down the laws of nature for the universe.

Zilsel's ideas were used by the historian of Chinese science, Joseph Needham to account for the lack of experimental science in traditional China despite the Chinese being in advance of the West in both technology and in many areas of natural history observation.