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    The McMaster Department of Philosophy has now put together the following notice commemorating Barry: Barry Allen: A Philosophical Life Barry…

Why did Goodman leave Penn?

Brian Leiter

Jonathan Strassfeld is working on a doctoral dissertation in the History Department at Rochester on the history of philosophy in mid-20th-century America, especially an institutional history about the leading departments and their areas of focus.  I've been helping him at various intervals with questions about faculty rosters, tenure status, and the like.  He recently wrote with a question to which I don't know the answer, but perhaps some readers can help:   "What were the circumstances leading to Nelson Goodman's exit from Pennsylvania's philosophy department?"   I believe he initially went to Brandeis, then to Harvard.  I have a dim recollection that Penn in the 1950s and 1960s was, like Yale, resisting the turn to "analytic" philosophy, with a large coteria of folks working in "classical" American philosophy.  But I am not at all confident about any of this.  Anyone know?  Signed comments very strongly preferred, since Mr. Strassfeld would like to be able to follow up with knowledgealbe individuals.

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10 responses to “Why did Goodman leave Penn?”

  1. Dean C. Rowan

    There is this from a very recent account by Howard Gardner of Project Zero (http://howardgardner01.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/pz-history-9-10-13.pdf):

    "Meanwhile, Nelson Goodman, who had moved from Philadelphia to the Boston area, in part because of a promise that he could be in effect a curator of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, had already become disaffected with Brandeis. He hoped to move back to his undergraduate and graduate alma mater, Harvard, and join the faculty of the distinguished Department of Philosophy. There is reason to believe that the Philosophy Department was party to this desire and sought to accomplish it within a few years, though the archives on this matter are sealed for eight decades!"

    Coincidentally, I am rereading Languages of Art, and with great difficulty. I have no training in philosophy, but my cataloging professor in library school (!) back in the late '80s admired Goodman's work and introduced it to the class.

    Reply
  2. Brad

    Catherine Elgin (Harvard) would also know about this. Jonathon should contact her.

    Reply
  3. John

    Robert Schwartz (UW-Milwaukee) would probably have some information as well. Mr. Strassfeld might do well to get in touch with Professor Schwartz.

    Reply
  4. Kristina Meshelski

    No relevant information to share, but would you please keep readers informed about this dissertation if/when it is available to read in some form? Interesting topic!

    Reply
  5. Allen Hazen

    Wasn't Goodman from Boston originally? I recall that he took a very long time to complete his PhD, and that he was running an art gallery in Boston at the time. So– and the Howard Gardner statement quoted by Dean Rowan seems to support this– the move from Penn might have been as much a matter of the pull from the Hub of the Universe as of any perceived push from the City of Brotherly Love.

    Even if Penn WAS Yalishly non-analytic.

    Reply
  6. Barry Lam

    I believe Gil Harman might know a lot about the relevant history, if not about this topic in particular.

    Reply
  7. Gilbert Harman

    From http://philosophy.sas.upenn.edu/department-history

    Nelson Goodman joined the department in 1945, where he remained for twenty years, publishing The Structure of Appearance (1951), Fact, Fiction & Forecast (1954). Other notable figures included Elizabeth Flower (ethics and philosophy in America), the first woman to receive a tenured appointment in the department, Francis Clarke (medieval philosophy), Marvin Farber (phenomenology), Richard Martin (logic and philosophy of language), Paul Ziff (aesthetics and semantics), and William Fontaine (social philosophy), the first African-American to be tenured in the department… James Ross joined the department as Assistant Professor in 1962 (moving from the same rank at Michigan) and was promoted to tenure in 1965. Charles Kahn was recruited from Columbia and appointed with tenure in 1965. Farber, Goodman, and Ziff left in 1964…

    Also possibly relevant are the linguists in the late 50s and early 60s including Zellig Harris and Henry Hiz. Hiz taught a summer course at Penn introducing philosophy students to transformational grammar. Attending and quite influenced by this course were Jerry Katz, Jerry Fodor, Barbara Partee, David Lewis, and me, among others I am not remembering. (I believe Nelson Goodman was skeptical of transformational grammar, but I think that the main reason he left is what Dean Rowan says in comment 1, above.)

    Reply
  8. Jonathan Strassfeld

    Thanks everyone, this has been very helpful. I'll try to get more information.

    Reply
  9. Kenneth Brown

    Fixed link from comment 1: http://www.pz.gse.harvard.edu/history.php

    I second the request from topic 4. Robert Paul Wolff's autobiography cut one swath across the disciplinary and institutional history of mid-twentieth century philosophy, and since reading that a few years ago I have longed for other such accounts.

    Reply
  10. David

    Israel Scheffler, Gallery of Scholars, includes a chapter "Goodman at Penn".

    Reply

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