Edgar Zilsel (August 11, 1891, Vienna, Austria-Hungary – March 11, 1944, Oakland, California) was an Austrian-American historian and philosopher of science.
He is best known for the Zilsel Thesis, a scientific proposal which traces the origins of western science to the interactions between scholars and skilled artisans.
[1] As part of the left wing of the Vienna Circle (a group of early twentieth-century philosophers) he endorsed historical materialism, and sought to establish empirical laws in history and in society.
An extended version of his PhD thesis was published as a book (The Application Problem: a Philosophical Investigation of the Law of Large Numbers and its Induction).
[4] Zilsel managed to escape from Austria after the Anschluss, first to England and in 1939 to the United States where he received a Rockefeller Fellowship enabling him to devote time to research.
In 1943, he was invited by Lynn White to teach physics at Mills College in California, but shortly thereafter committed suicide with an overdose of sleeping pills.
Zilsel has been praised by historian Clifford D. Conner [8] for having been the first to stress the role of artisans and craftsmen in the development of modern science.
According to Conner,[8] the theses of Zilsel were met with resistance at the time of their publication, also due to the author's early death, and his works were later revalued by historians such as Pamela H.