Charlie Dunbar Broad

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Western Philosophy 20th-century philosophy
Name:	Charlie Dunbar (C.D.) Broad
Birth:	December 30, 1887
Death:	March 11, 1971
School/tradition:	Analytic philosophy
Main interests:	Metaphysics, Ethics, Philosophy of the Mind, Logic
Influences:	John Locke, William Ernest Johnson, Alfred North Whitehead, G. E. Moore, Bertrand Russell
Influenced:	A. J. Ayer

Charlie Dunbar Broad (known as C.D. Broad) (30 December 1887 - 11 March 1971) was an English epistemologist, historian of philosophy,philosopher of science, moral philosopher, and writer on the philsophical aspects of psychical research. He was known for his thorough and dispassionate examinations of all conceivable arguments in such works as The Mind and Its Place in Nature (1925), Scientific Thought (1930) and Examination of McTaggart's Philosophy (1933).

1 Life
2 Timeline Summary
3 Philosophy
4 Books and Publications
5 External References
6 References

[edit] Life

Charlie Broad was born in Harlesden, a district of London, England. As the only child of middle-class parents in comfortable circumstances, he received a good education at Dulwich College. Because of his special interest and ability in mathematics and science , in 1908 he earned a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge University, and there began his philosophical career. Despite success in his work at Cambridge, he became convinced that he would never be an outstanding scientist and thus turned to philosophy, in which he took first-class honors with special distinction in 1910. A year later he was elected to a fellowship at Trinity because of a dissertation that became his first book, Perception, Physics, and Reality. (Cambridge, UK, 1914.)

He earned his professorship in philosophy at Cambridge in 1933.

[edit] Timeline Summary

Fellow of Trinity College: 1911
Assistant Lecturer and Lecturer at St Andrews University: 1911-20
Professor at Bristol University: 1920-23
College Lecturer at Trinity College: 1923-
Lecturer in Moral Science at Cambridge University: 1926-31
President of the Aristotelian Society: 1927-1928; 1954-1955.
Sidgwick Lecturer at Cambridge University: 1931-33
Knightsbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy at Cambridge University: 1933-53
President of the Society of Psychical Research: 1935 & 1958.

[edit] Philosophy

Broad had no "philosophy" in the sense of a deeply original way of interpreting and dealing with the issues of his field. He was a scientist manque who took up philosophical problems much as he found them classified and more manageable but not transformed. His impressive ability to understand and recast the most difficult arguments, the elegance of his writing, his unrivaled thoroughness and lucidity, were placed at the service of other people's questions rather than his own.