Abstract

Percy W. Bridgman (1882-1961). Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at Harward University and winner of the Nobel Price in 1946 for his researches in high pressure physics, is well known in the educational, scientific and philosophical circles of the United States as the first and principal protagonist of the operational method of defining concepts and as the founder of the influential semi-philosophical movement variously called "Operationalism" or "Operationism." In addition to enjoying a distinguished career as a research physicist, Percy W. Bridgman wrote a series of threatises, some of considerable length, devoted to the exposition and defense of his conception of Operational Analysis: a conception simultaneously involving a method and a methodology: a tool for achieving greater precision in formulating concepts, particularly physical concepts, and a theory in terms of which the same method is to emerge as a superior and even the exclusive means to the ascertainment of what is real.