METAPHILOSOPHY Vol. 5, No. 2, April 1974

A MEMORIAL NOTE ON ALAN ROSS ANDERSON Editors’ note: We regret to announce the death of Alan Ross

Anderson, who served on the Board of Consulting Editors of Metuphilosophy since its inception in 1969. The memorial note which appears below was kindly provided by Nuel D. Belnap, Jr., who was a friend and colleague of Professor Anderson.

ALAN ROSS ANDERSON

1925-1973

Alan Ross Anderson died a t home in Pittsburgh on December 5, 1973, of cancer. He had been ill for over a year; it was

characteristic of him that through this period he remained active and cheerful-indeed, he conducted a graduate seminar just a few days before he died, with the aid of a miniature “public address system” to amplify his failing voice. He is survived by his wife, Carolyn, his sons Nicholas, Jeffrey, and Timothy, his daughter, Elizabeth, and his mother, Mrs. Ross E. Anderson.

Born in Portland, Oregon, he was raised principally in Little Rock, Arkansas, and took his undergraduate work a t Yale University. After securing his B.A. in 1950, Alan was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship and attended Cambridge University from 1950 to 1952, obtaining a M.Litt.; he then returned to Yale with a Betts Fellowship, receiving his Ph.D. in 1955. He taught at Dartmouth College in 1954-55, and then at Yale from 1955 to 1965, having been appointed professor in 1963. He was Gug- genheim Fellow and Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Alanchester in 1964-65, and then served as professor a t the University of Pittsburgh from 1965. He was chairman of the department of philosophy from 1967 to 1970. He had been in- vited to visit the Australian National University in 1974; and a letter announcing his acceptance at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences arrived just too late for him to see it.

Alan’s principal speciality was mathematical logic, to which he made a number of significant and typically seminal contribu- tions, presented in a marvelously casual literary style calculated to please the sensibilities as well as the intellect. Though it

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would not do to summarize his nearly 200 publications, notable in this area are his early work on decision procedures in modal logic, his reduction of deontic logic to modal logic by means of what Arthur Prior dubbed the “Andersonian Simplification”, and his foundational work on the logic of relevance, His contri- butions to logic reflect a broad philosophic vision and ability to weld wide-ranging interests into a creative whole.

In the mid-fifties he began a collaboration with the social psychologist 0. K. Moore at Yale, which continued when both relocated at the University of Pittsburgh. This fruitful collabora- tion yielded a number of articles concerning early education, autotelic folk-models, and related topics in the theory of social interaction, with emphasis on his true love: the potential ap- plication of formal methods. Alan was co-creator with Moore of a series of documentary films jointly titled Early Reading and Writing. It particularly pleased him to compose and perform the incidental music for these films; as was so often the case, a project benefited from his diverse talents and interests. Alan also published two books outside his specialities: Minds and Machines, and (with M. Mandelbaum, F. Gramlich, and J. Schneewind) Philosophic Problems.

Alan was extremely energetic; while working with Moore, he began an additional collaborative venture with me on entail- ment and other topics in relevance logic. (This venture too was continued at Pittsburgh.) The principal yield was a two-volume work Entailment: the logic of relevance and necessity, the first volume of which is in the hands of Princeton University Press and the second of which is virtually complete. What stands out most in relief from the many thoughts I have about the past fifteen years of working with Alan is the sheer fun-I hope that is the right word-he found and made others find in every enter- prise.

Moore and I were not his only co-workers: over and over again the combination of his personal warmth, intellectual pas- sion and infectious enthusiasm turned erstwhile students into collaborators. Both in and out of the classroom Alan was a spectacularly good teacher. Partly this was due to unerring peda- gogic judgment, a superb sense of the a propos. To say nothing of his expert knowledge of his specialities, he was widely read in literature and all the humane disciplines and possessed in addition a ferocious memory for stories and anecdotes, which he would use, sometimes years later, in just the right way to

A MEMORIAL NOTE ON ALAN ROSS ANDERSON 75 illustrate or drive home a point. Partly it was due to the delight- fully informal style in which he carried on all his academic pursuits. Typical of his good humor was the time he fainted during a class; the next week, after the class had assembled, he walked in, stretched himself out full length on the floor, then began, “Now let’s commence where we left off’, Whatever the causes, he had an unexcelled ability to impart not just results but feels, approaches, styles; he was a master at motivation, at com- municating the point of the enterprise-and at teaching others the importance of doing likewise.

Alan was deeply involved in service to the profession he loved, always combining seriousness about getting the job done with his unfailing casual good cheer. He served in reviewing and editorial capacities for a variety of journals, including Juri- metrics journal, American Philosophical Quarterly, Zentral- blatt fur Mathematik, Mathematical reoiews, Journal of philoso- phical logic, Metaphilosophy, and The journal of symbolic logic, of which he was twice for short periods an editor. The organiza- tions in which he participated include the Association for Sym- bolic Logic, and the American Philosophical Association (a number of committees of each), the National Woodrow Wilson Committee, Mind Association, International Union of History and Philosophy of Science (a number of committees and posi- tions), Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, Alexander Philosophical Society, and the Fulbright-Hays Advisory Screen- ing Committee. Alan also contributed his time unstintingly to his university: both at Yale and at Pittsburgh he was always ready to become involved in committee and administrative chores, including his tour as department chairman a t Pittsburgh.

As I read over this impressive list, I cannot think how Alan managed to carry out all these enterprises; for never did he give the impression of being hyper-organized or harried, always hav- ing time for what and whomever. Nor did he deprive his familyb to which he was devoted, and with which he made an invariable point of spending the evening hours.

I do not know anyone who generated as much affection in as many people as Alan; he was unreservedly loved by those with whom he came in contact. Our lives are the less for his passing; but very much the greater for his having passed this way.

Nuel D. Belnap, Jr.