Émile Meyerson
Polish-born French epistemologist, chemist, and philosopher of science
Émile Meyerson (French: [mɛjɛʁsɔn]; 12 February 1859 – 2 December 1933) was a Polish-born French epistemologist, chemist, philosopher of science and Zionist activist.
Biography
Meyerson was born Ezryel-Szoel-Froim Meyerson to a Jewish family. He was educated at the University of Heidelberg and studied chemistry under Robert Wilhelm Bunsen. In 1882 Meyerson settled in Paris. He served as foreign editor of the Havas news agency, and later as the director of the Jewish Colonization Association for Europe and Asia Minor. He became a naturalized French citizen after World War I.
Thomas Kuhn cites Meyerson's work as influential while developing the ideas for his main work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
In La Déduction relativiste, Meyerson expressed the view that Einstein's general theory of relativity was a new version of the identification of matter with space, which he considered "the postulate upon which the whole (Cartesian) system rests."
Works
Identité et réalité (1908)
De l'explication dans les sciences, 2 vols. (1921)
La déduction relativiste (1925)
Du cheminement de la pensée, 3 vols. (1931)
Réel et déterminisme dans la physique quantique (1933)
Essais (1936)
See also
Franciszka Arnsztajnowa (his sister)
Notes
References
Further reading
Boas, George (1930). A critical analysis of the philosophy of Emile Meyerson.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q286232. VIAF identifies the subject as 64009283. The Library of Congress control number is n50036624. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1859, 1933, 1882 and 1908.
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