Collected Works Selected Papers

Bergmann's early philosophical work concerned the foundations of psychology and physics (topics were e.g. the behaviorist J B Watson, operationism, psychoanalysis, psychological measurement, psychophysics, emergence and quantum physics). Bergmann was born in Vienna in 1906. After finishing the Gymnasium he registered at the University of Vienna. Before he took a Ph.D. in mathematics with a minor in philosophy in 1928, he had already been invited along with his Gymnasium classmate Kurt Godel to join the Vienna Circle, where he was especially influenced by Schlick, Waismann and Carnap. In 1929-30 Bergmann taught mathematics at a Realschule in Vienna and in the following year he went to Berlin to work as assistant of Einstein together with W. Mayer his dissertation director. Discouraged by the discrimination against Jews at German and Austrian universities Bergmann returned to Vienna to study law. He took a JD and went into a firm of corporation lawyers. When Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938 Bergmann emigrated to the United States with financial assistance from Circle Member Otto Neurath. In 1939 he obtained an appointment at the University of Iowa as an assistant to the psychologist Kurt Lewin. He was employed to develop a mathematical representation of Lewin's psychological field theory. In 1940 Bergmann became assistant professor at the Department of Philosophy, and in 1950 full professor of philosophy and psychology. During the 1960s and 1970s Bergmann had a major impact on contemporary philosophy and contemporary issues in the philosophy and methodology of psychology, attracting brilliant students who went on to teach in philosophy and psychology departments of leading universities of the United States. Bergmann and his philosophy students and followers were sometimes referred to as " The Iowa School" or " The Iowa Realists". It brought national and international status to a small philosophy department of a middle-sized midwestern university. From 1967-68 he served as president of the American Philosophical Association (Western Division) and in 1972 he was awarded the first named professorship in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Iowa as Carver Professor. Bergmann retired in 1974 and died in 1987.