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Mario Agusto Bunge, FRSC, physicist, philosopher (born at Buenos Aires, Argentina on 21 September 1919; died 24 February 2020 in Montreal, QC). His career as a researcher rapidly assumed international scope and led him on to countless activities as an editor, speaker, guest professor, learned society member, and recipient of honorary distinctions, etc.
Mario Bunge
Mario Bunge, physicist and philosopher, 24 September 2014.
(Photo by Ricardo Ceppi/Getty Images)
Career
Mario Bunge turned toward philosophy, which he taught at the University of Buenos Aires from 1957 to 1963. Driven to emigrate by the political situation of his native country, particularly due to his socialist leanings, Mario Bunge initially settled in Europe, then in Montreal, where in 1966 he joined the philosophy department at McGill University and never looked back.
Author of over 80 books (including many translations into several languages) and some 500 articles mainly in English and Spanish, cofounder with logician Hugues Leblanc of the Society for Exact Philosophy, Mario Bunge set himself a task as an epistemologist, achieving a synthesis of rationalism and empiricism (Scientific Research, 1967, new version: Philosophy of Science, 1999), and also as a generalist philosopher and creator of a complete system, thanks to his monumental 8 volume Treatise on Basic Philosophy (1974-89), in which he defended conceptions on materialism and humanism. In his own cutting style, his Dictionary of Philosophy (1999) accurately conveys this thought. Advocate of a precise philosophy "offering axiomatic and formalised expression of concepts and theories" he no less supported original positions on moral thought and politics. Mario Bunge was for example actively present on Montreal's cultural scene, and one of the first pillars of the Association des Sceptiques du Québec, devoted to critical examination of the paranormal and denunciation of the pseudo-sciences. This great polymath and member of the Royal Society of Canada is known internationally.
