Colin Murray Turbayne (7 February 1916 – 16 May 2006) was an Australian philosopher and an internationally recognized authority on the writings of George Berkeley. He spent most of his thirty five year academic career at the University of Rochester and was noted as the author of the book The Myth of Metaphor.
Biography
Early life
Turbayne was born on February 7, 1916, in the rural town of Tanny Morel in Queensland, Australia. His father David Livingston Turbayne was a banker and his mother Alice Eva Rene Lahey was descended from an early pioneer family in Queensland.
Colin received his earliest education at the Church of England Grammar School in Brisbane, where he distinguished himself as both a cricketer and Head Prefect. He completed his Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia in 1940 as well as an MA degree in 1946. During World War II he worked for Australian Intelligence in the Pacific War theatre and served as Chief of Staff for Australian Intelligence to Douglas MacArthur in several pacific theatres.
in 1940 he married Ailsa Krimmer and subsequently raised a family of two boys: Ron and John. They remained happily married for fifty-one years until her death in 1992.
Academic studies
After emigrating to the United States following the conclusion of World War II in 1947, he undertook graduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1950 he earned both his MA and PhD degrees in philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania.
His PhD. dissertation at the University of Pennsylvania Constructions Versus Inferences in the Philosophy of Bertrand Russell focused on the philosophical works of the British philosopher and logician Bertrand Russell (1950). His MA dissertation at the University of Queensland focused on Berkeley's philosophy as embodied in his Commonplace book(1947).
Following the completion of his advanced studies, Turbayne acquired his first academic post as an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Washington. He remained on the faculty from 1950 until 1955. Subsequently, he served as an assistant professor of speech at the University of California at Berkley from 1955 until 1957. Soon thereafter, he was appointed as an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Rochester in 1957. A short time later in 1962, he was promoted to Full Professor of Philosophy and continued to teach at the University of Rochester until his appointment to Professor Emeritus in 1981.
Academic works
In addition to serving as a lecturer, Turbayne was a noted authority and researcher on the philosophical insights of George Berkeley. Over the years, he edited several of Berkeley's works and essays, while helping to sustain interest in Berkeley's works during the mid twentieth century. In addition, he was the first commentator to recognize the central importance of metaphor in the philosophy of Berkeley. He is best known for his book The Myth of Metaphor which was published in 1962 by Yale University Press. A critical reviewer described the work as a "welcome addition to the analysis of metaphorical language".
In his book, Turbayne argues that metaphor would necessarily occur in any language that could ever claim to embody richness and depth of understanding. In addition, he provides a critical analysis of the simplistic Cartesian and Newtonian depictions of the universe as little more than a "machine" - a concept which underlies much of the scientific materialism which prevails in the modern Western world. He also provides evidence that the philosophical concept of "material substance" or "substratum" has limited meaning at best and that modern man has unknowingly fallen victim to an unnecessary literal interpretation of one of many potentially beneficial metaphorical models of the universe.