birth_date: 1786-05-29 00:00:00
avg_rating: 5
name: Alexander Bryan Johnson
about: Alexander Bryan Johnson (1786-1867) was an English-born American philosopher and banker.From his youth, he had given all his leisure to the study of problems in intellectual philosophy, and, especially, of the relations between knowledge and language. He attempted to show the ultimate meaning of words, apart from their meaning as related to each other in ordinary definition, and, thus, to ascertain the nature of human knowledge as it exists, independent of the words in which it is expressed.His 1836 work, A Treatise on Language, was little recognised in his own time, and this remained the case for nearly a century after his death. It can now be seen to have anticipated the thrust of logical positivism, at least, in arguing that misunderstan Alexander Bryan Johnson (1786-1867) was an English-born American philosopher and banker.From his youth, he had given all his leisure to the study of problems in intellectual philosophy, and, especially, of the relations between knowledge and language. He attempted to show the ultimate meaning of words, apart from their meaning as related to each other in ordinary definition, and, thus, to ascertain the nature of human knowledge as it exists, independent of the words in which it is expressed.His 1836 work, A Treatise on Language, was little recognised in his own time, and this remained the case for nearly a century after his death. It can now be seen to have anticipated the thrust of logical positivism, at least, in arguing that misunderstandings of how language operates bedevil philosophical questions and theories of modern linguistics. ...more
death_date: 1867-09-09 00:00:00