Cohen, Lawrence Jonathan 1923-2006

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born May 7, 1923, in London, England; died September 26, 2006. Philosopher, educator, and author. Cohen was a fellow emeritus at Oxford's Queen's College who was well respected for his contributions to philosophy involving human reasoning and induction. After serving in British Naval Intelligence as a code breaker during World War II, he graduated with a master's degree from Balliol College in 1947. Cohen then taught logic and metaphysics at Edinburgh University for three years and was a lecturer in philosophy at St. Andrews University from 1950 until 1957. He joined the Queen's College faculty as praelector in philosophy and fellow of the college, remaining at Oxford until his 1990 retirement. Cohen was fascinated by how the human mind comes to conclusions using inductive reasoning. He studied this process and applied it to such various fields as scientific research, the medical profession, and the legal profession. He wondered how people rationally come to conclusions, even when evidence might be scarce, and argued that human beings were more logical in the process than many of his colleagues believed. Cohen further felt that the use of induction, intuition, and relying on knowledge of probability could also be rational tools for processing information and making decisions. A former president of the British Society for Philosophy of Science and copresident of the International Union of History and Philosophy, Cohen published over a half dozen books, including The Probable and the Provable (1977), The Dialogue of Reason (1986), An Introduction to the Philosophy of Induction and Probability (1989), An Essay on Belief and Acceptance (1992), and Knowledge and Language (2002).

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PERIODICALS

Times (London, England), October 3, 2006, p. 62.