The Law of Causality and its Limits was the principal philosophical work
of the physicist turned philosopher, Philipp Frank. Born in Vienna on
March 20, 1884, Frank died in Cambridge, Massachusetts on July 21, 1966.
He received his doctorate in 1907 at the University of Vienna in
theoretical physics, having studied under Ludwig Boltzmann; his sub-
sequent research in physics and mathematics was represented by more than
60 scientific papers. Moreover his great success as teacher and
expositor was recognized throughout the scientific world with
publication of his collaborative Die Differentialgleichungen der
Mechanik und Physik, with Richard von Mises, in 1925-27. Frank was
responsible for the second volume, on physics, and especially noted for
his authoritative article on classical Hamiltonian mechanics and optics.
Among his earliest papers were those, beginning in 1908, devoted to
special relativity, which together with general relativity and physical
cosmology occupied him throughout his life. Already in 1907, Frank
published his seminal paper 'Kausalgesetz und Erfahrung' ('Experience
and the Law of Causality'), much later collected with a splendid
selection of his essays on philosophy of science, in English (1941c and
1949g, in our Bibliography). Joining the first 'Vienna Circle' in the
first decade of the 20th century, with Hans Hahn, mathematician, and
Otto Neurath, sociologist and economist, and deeply influenced by
studies of Ernst Mach's critical conceptual histories of science and by
the striking challenge of Poincare and Duhem, Frank continued his
epistemological investigations.
