Richard Bevan Braithwaite (15 January 1900–21 April 1990) was an English philosopher who specialized in the philosophy of science, ethics, and the philosophy of religion. He was a lecturer in moral science at the
University of Cambridge from 1934 to 1953, then
Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy there from 1953 to 1967. He was president of the
Aristotelian Society from 1946 to 1947, and was elected a fellow of the
British Academy in 1957.
Background
Braithwaite was born in
Banbury,
Oxfordshire, and studied physics and mathematics at Cambridge.
He was married (secondly) to the computational linguist and philosopher
Margaret Masterman with whom he founded the
Epiphany Philosophers a group of (largely)
Anglicans and
Quakers seeking a new view of the relationship between philosophy and science (see the Pardshaw Dialogues, below).
Work
Although he was positivistically inclined, Braithwaite was a Christian, having been brought up a Quaker and becoming an Anglican later. According to theologian
Alister E. McGrath Braithwaite's 1955 Eddington Memorial Lecture "An Empiricist's View of the Nature of Religious Belief"Braithwaite, Richard. in
Basil Mitchell (ed.).
The Philosophy of Religion. Oxford University Press, 1970, pp. 72–91. is to date the most widely cited publication (e.g. by Anglican priest
Don Cupitt) from a genre of 1970's-1980's theological works arguing that "God" and "religion" are human...
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