Background
Jean Rey was born on December 29, 1873, in Chalon-sur-Saone, France.
Lycée Louis-le-Grand, 123 rue Saint-Jacques Paris, France
Rey studied philosophy at the Lycee Louis-le-Grand.
Sorbonne, Paris, France
Abel Rey studied law and science in the Sorbonne.
educator historian philosopher author
Jean Rey was born on December 29, 1873, in Chalon-sur-Saone, France.
Rey studied classics at the lycee in Marseilles and in Paris, at the Lycee Louis-le-Grand and the Sorbonne. He won his license in law, the aggregation in philosophy, and took the courses leading to a licence es sciences. He studied philosophy and its history under Victor Brochard and Emile Boutroux and mathematics and the history of science under Emile Picard and Paul Tannery. He also shared the esthetic ideals of Gabriel Seailles and attended the lectures of Henri Poincare.
Rey worked in the laboratories of Edmond Bouty and Lippmann at a time when the alliance of philosophy and science was still a daring novelty in French academic life.
Rey taught philosophy at the lycee of Bourg-en-Bresse and then at Beauvais. The topics of his two dissertations for the doctoral es lettres reflected his training in philosophy and science: La theorie de la physique chez les physiciens contemporains and L'energetique et le mecanisme au point de vue de la theorie de la connaissance (Paris, 1907).
In 1908 he was appointed to the Faculty of Letters of Dijon, where he established an experimental psychology laboratory equipped with the most advanced apparatus. The laboratory was the outcome of long reflection on psychology, which Rey had published in 1903 in Lemons elementaires de psycltologie et de philosophic. This work was accompanied by Elements de philosophic scientifique et morale (1903) and Lemons de morale fondees sur Vhistoire des moeurs et des institutions (1905), both of which were designed for use in the classics curriculum. He also wrote the chapter on invention for the first edition of Georges Dumas’s Traite de psycltologie (1923). In 1909 Rey published La philosophic moderne, which enjoyed a large audience, “curious about a philosophic panorama modernized by epistemology” - in the words of his student and biographer Pierre Ducasse.
In 1919, following the interruption of his research by World War I, Rey was named professor of the history and philosophy of science at the Sorbonne. In 1922 he published Le retour eternel et la philosophic de la physique, which contrasted scientific theories with “an intuition that has always recurred (in philosophy) from the Greeks until Nietzsche.”
In 1932 Rey was named first director of the new Institut d’Histoire des Sciences et des Techniques at the University of Paris. This post, which he held until his death, made him responsible for the publication of the first four volumes of Thales, containing reports on the Institute’s activities. He also supervised for the series Actualites Scientifiques et Industrielles, the collection of texts and translations “Pour Servir a l’Histoire de la Pensee Moderne” and the “Exposes d’Histoire et de Philosophic des Sciences.”
Rey was associated with the Centre International de Synthese from its beginning, and he organized its Section des Sciences de la Nature before becoming, in 1931, director of the Section de Synthese Generate. In this latter capacity, he collaborated with Henri Berr, Lucien Febvre, and Paul Langevin on the Revue de synthese and the journal Science.
Febvre invited Rey to collaborate on the Encyclopedic franfaise, and with A. Meillet and P. Montel he edited the first volume, L'outillage mental, to which he contributed the opening pages: “De la pensee primitive a la pensee actuelle.” Henri Berr, impressed by his skill in synthesizing, entrusted him with the four volumes of the series “Evolution de l'Humanite” that were devoted to the role of Greece in the origins of scientific thought: La science dans Vantiquite, 1, La science orientate avant les Grecs (1930); II, La jeunesse de la science grecque (1933); III, La maturite de la pensee scientifique en Grece (1939); IV, L'apogee de la science technique grecque: 1, Les sciences de la nature et de I'homme, les mathematiques, d'Hippocrate a Platon (1946); and 2, L'essor de la mathematique (1948).
A philosopher, Rey was fascinated by science. Free of dogmatism, he admired the rigor of Kant, the sincerity of Renouvier, and the intuitions of Comte. A remarkable teacher, he was sensitive to the strivings of individuals and the fate of society. In his thought, deep-rooted positivism was tempered by reason and sensitivity.
Quotations: As an epistemologist he was close to Gaston Milhaud, Emile Meyerson, and Leon Brunschvicg; but he maintained a personal orientation the governing idea of which is summarized in a remark he often made: “Real scientific truth lies in its historical curve. It never lies on one point of the curve.”
Abel Rey was one of the first members of the Academie Internationale d'Histoire des Sciences.