Mario Bunge

Mario Augusto Bunge (September 21, 1919 – February 24, 2020) was an Argentine-Canadian philosopher and physicist. His philosophical writings combined scientific realism, systemism, materialism, emergentism, and other principles. He was an advocate of "exact philosophy" and a critic of existentialist, hermeneutical, phenomenological philosophy, and postmodernism. He was popularly known for his opinions against pseudoscience. Bunge was born on September 21, 1919, in Florida Oeste, Buenos Aires. His mother was a German nurse, and his father was an Argentine physician and socialist legislator. Bunge was raised without religious education and enjoyed a stimulating childhood. He had four children with two wives. He began his studies at the National University of La Plata, graduating with a PhD in physico-mathematical sciences in 1952. He was professor of theoretical physics and philosophy at La Plata and the University of Buenos Aires. He gained international recognition early in his career. He was a Frothingham Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at McGill University in Montreal from 1966 until his retirement. He became a centenarian in 2019 and died in Montreal in 2020 at the age of 100.