author
Carveth Read
1848–1931
A British philosopher and logician, he wrote clear, influential books on logic while also ranging into ethics, psychology, and the origins of religion and superstition. His work helped bring scientific habits of thought into philosophy for a wide general readership.
2 Audiobooks
Logic: Deductive and Inductive
by Carveth Read
The Origin of Man and of His Superstitions
by Carveth Read
About the author
Born in Falmouth on March 16, 1848, Carveth Read studied at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he took a first in the Moral Sciences Tripos and later earned his M.A. He then spent several years as a Hibbert Travelling Scholar at Leipzig and Heidelberg, deepening the broad intellectual background that shaped his later work.
Read is best known for his writing on logic, especially Logic, Deductive and Inductive, a book that reached a wide audience and stayed in use for many years. He also served at University College London, where he became Grote Professor of Philosophy of Mind and Logic, and he wrote across a striking range of subjects, including metaphysics, morals, comparative psychology, and human evolution.
Later in his career, his interests moved beyond formal logic into anthropology and the study of belief, most notably in The Origin of Man and of His Superstitions. He died on December 6, 1931, at Solihull, remembered as a thinker who tried to connect philosophy with the methods and discoveries of science.