Giovanni Vailati (24 April 1863 – 14 May 1909) was an Italian proto-analytic philosopher, historian of science, and mathematician. Life Vailati was born in Crema, Lombardy, and studied engineering at the University of Turin. He went on to lecture in the history of mechanics there from 1896 to 1899, after working as assistant to Giuseppe Peano and Vito Volterra. He resigned his university post in 1899 so that he could pursue his independent studies, making a living from high-school mathematics teaching. During his lifetime he became internationally known, his writings having been translated into English, French, and Polish, though he was largely forgotten after his death in Rome. He was rediscovered in the late 1950s. He did not publish any complete books, but left about 200 essays and reviews across a range of academic disciplines. Philosophy Vailati's view of philosophy was that it provided a preparation and the tools for scientific work. For that reason, and because philosophy should be neutral between rival beliefs, conceptions, theoretical structures, etc., the philosopher should avoid the use of special technical language, but should use the language that he finds used in those areas in which he is interested. That is not to say that the philosopher should merely accept whatever he finds; an ordinary-language term may be problematic, but its deficiencies should be corrected rather than replacing it with some new technical term. His view of truth and meaning was influenced by philosophers such as C.S. Peirce and Ernst Mach. He carefully distinguished between meaning and truth: "the question of determining what we mean when we propound a given proposition is entirely different from the question of deciding whether it is true or false. Nevertheless, having decided what is meant, the work of deciding whether it is true or false is crucial. Vailati held a moderate positivist view, in both science and philosophy: "it must be demanded of anybody who advances a thesis that he be capable of indicating the facts which according to him should obtain (or have obtained) if his thesis were true, and also their difference from other facts which according to him would obtain (or have obtained) if it were not true" Vailati's influences and contacts were many and varied, belying the oversimple label often attached to him: "the Italian pragmatist". While owing much to Peirce and William James (between whose thought he was one of the first to