BRIDGMAN, PERCY WILLIAM

(1882–1962)

American physicist and Nobel prize-winner (1946). Bridgman wrote extensively on the philosophical implications of modern physics. He is inseparably linked with operationalism, or the view that each scientific concept is defined in terms of a set of empirical operations. However, he later modified this stark, and some say stifling, doctrine by allowing indirect connections between concepts and experience. Works include The Logic of Modern Physics (1927) and The Nature of Physical Theory (1936).