Israeli Philosopher
Yemima Ben-Menahem (Hebrew: ימימה בן-מנחם, born 23 December 1946) is a professor (Emerita) of philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her main area of expertise is philosophy of science, in particular philosophy of modern physics.[1]
Biography
Yemima Goldschmidt (later Ben-Menahem) earned a BSc in physics and mathematics in 1969 and an MSc (summa cum laude) in philosophy of science in 1972, both from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She earned her PhD at the Hebrew University in 1983 with a dissertation entitled "Paradoxes and Intuitions", under the direction of Mark Steiner.[citation needed]
Ben-Menachem is married to Hanina Ben-Menachem, a professor of law at Hebrew University, with whom she has four children. Her mother was Elisabeth Goldschmidt, a pioneer of genetic research in Israel, and her father Yosef Goldschmidt, a Knesset Member and Deputy Minister representing the National Religious Party.[2]
Academic career
In 2001, Ben-Menahem founded the Journal Aleph: Historical Studies in Science and Judaism.[citation needed] She served as Director of the Edelstein Center for the History and Philosophy of Science, Technology and Medicine at the Hebrew University.[3] Since 2006, she has been member of the Academic Board of the Einstein Papers Project.[4]
In 2007, she curated the exhibition Newton's Secrets at the National Library of Israel.[5][6]
Ben-Menahem devoted several papers and a book to conventionalism,[7] a position first articulated by Henri Poincaré in the context of geometry. According to conventionalists, many of the assertions we take to express objective truths, are in fact conventions in disguise, derived from definitions or methodological decisions that are not forced on us by logic, mathematics, or empirical fact, and about which we have discretion. Ben-Menahem reads twentieth century science and philosophy from the perspective of the impact of conventionalism on these fields. The pronounced influence of conventionalism, according to her, is manifest in the philosophy of logic and mathematics, the theory of relativity, and the writings of leading twentieth century philosophers including Carnap, Wittgenstein, Putnam, and Quine.[8]
Ben-Menahem has written on Jorge Luis Borges, Donald Davidson, Michel Foucault, William James, Emil Meyerson, Henri Poincaré.[9]
Awards and recognition
In 2022, Ben-Menachem won the Israel Prize for the study of philosophy and religious sciences.[10]
