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Abraham Kaplan
(11 Jun 1918 - 19 Jun 1993)
Ukrainian-American philosopher whose interest ranged wrote among ethics, aesthetics, political theory, and methodology of the social sciences. He authored several books, including In Pursuit of Wisdom (1977), and wrote about a hundred articles in professional journals.
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Science Quotes by Abraham Kaplan (4 quotes)
A troubling question for those of us committed to the widest application of intelligence in the study and solution of the problems of men is whether a general understanding of the social sciences will be possible much longer. Many significant areas of these disciplines have already been removed by the advances of the past two decades beyond the reach of anyone who does not know mathematics; and the man of letters is increasingly finding, to his dismay, that the study of mankind proper is passing from his hands to those of technicians and specialists. The aesthetic effect is admittedly bad: we have given up the belletristic “essay on man” for the barbarisms of a technical vocabulary, or at best the forbidding elegance of mathematical syntax.
— Abraham Kaplan
Opening paragraph of 'The Study of Man: Sociology Learns the Language of Mathematics' in Commentary (1 Sep 1952). Reprinted in James Roy Newman, The World of Mathematics (1956), Vol. 2, 1294.
I am by training a positivist, by inclination a pragmatist, in temperament a mystic, in practice a democrat; my faith Jewish, educated by Catholics, a habitual Protestant; born in Europe, raised in the Midwest, hardened in the East, softened in California and living in Israel.
— Abraham Kaplan
Given as “said of himself”, in Eyal Diskin, 'Abraham Kaplan' in Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.), Encyclopaedia Judaica (2007).
Interest in everything.
— Abraham Kaplan
Given as “Kaplan’s motto”, in Eyal Diskin, 'Abraham Kaplan' in Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.), Encyclopaedia Judaica (2007).
Mathematics is not yet capable of coping with the naivete of the mathematician himself.
— Abraham Kaplan
In 'The Study of Man: Sociology Learns the Language of Mathematics', Commentary (1 Sep 1952). Reprinted in James Roy Newman, The World of Mathematics (1956), Vol. 2, 1301.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
