| Full name | E.A. Burtt |
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| Born | 1892 Groton, Massachusetts |
| Died | September 6, 1989 |
| Era | 20th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western Philosophy |
| School | Pragmatic naturalism (Υoung Radicals) |
| Main interests | Philosophy of science History of science Philosophy of religion |
| Notable ideas | Metaphysical Foundations of Physical Science |
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Edwin Arthur Burtt (1892 – September 6, 1989[1]) was an American philosopher who wrote extensively on the philosophy of religion. His doctoral thesis published as a book under the title The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science has had a significant influence upon the history of science that is not generally recognized, according to H. Floris Cohen.[2] He was educated at Yale University, Union Theological Seminary and Columbia University. He became the prestigious Susan Linn Sage Professor of Philosophy at Cornell University in 1941.
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He was born to missionary parents, who took Burtt (Ned) to China for several of his teenage years. Although he maintained throughout his life a sympathy towards religious values and beliefs, he acknowledged that his philosophy had been marked by a reaction towards what he saw as his own father's too narrow an outlook.[3] He graduated from Yale in 1915, where he was a member of Skull and Bones.[4]:983
Although Burtt participated in drafting the Humanist Manifesto I, he did not work on the project further, because he lost interest after his ideas that spiritual experience is the identification with categories of space, time, causality, and other fundamental physical principles were never included in the final publications.[2]
Based on his own statements, Thomas Kuhn may very well have been unaware that in building on the philosophy of Alexandre Koyre, he was in turn building on the philosophy of Burtt whose influence upon Koyre has been demonstrated as substantial.[2]