Background
Vailati, Giovanni was born on April 24, 1863 in Crema.
Vailati, Giovanni was born on April 24, 1863 in Crema.
Studied Engineering at the University of Turin. lnfls:G. Peano, V. Volterra. C. S. Peirce, E. Mach, G. W. Leibniz, C. Brentano, G. E. Moore and B. Russell.
Lecturer, History of Mechanics, Turin University, 1896-1899, thereafter freelance writer. Associated with the editorial committee of Revista di Filosofia.
Vailati was an Italian pragmatist of the period in which nineteenth-century positivism was giving way to the neo-idealism of Croce and Gentile, which he opposed. He adopted a logical-analytical approach to the study of language, including that of science. Opposed to systems, he proposed that philosophy should be a neutral analytical discipline treating opinions as facts to be understood and verified. In the wide-ranging historical work with which his career began, he shows openness to external factors while adhering to the method of the philosophical historian in the manner common at the time as in Mach and Duhem. Subjects studied included the metaphysics of Aristotle, the history of mechanics, and Saccheri and the origins of non-Euclidean geometry. He believed that scientists and philosophers should cooperate, rather than ignore or attempt to dominate each other. Vailati suffered an eclipse after his death due to the fragmentary nature of his output and the rise of idealism, but he has attracted more interest from the 1950s, particularly with the centenary of his birth.