This volume offers 11 papers that cover the wide spectrum of influences on Rudolf Carnap’s seminal work, Der Logische Aufbau der Welt (The Logical Structure of the World). Along the way, it covers a host of topics related to this important philosophical work, including logic, theories of order, science, hermeneutics, and mathematics in the Aufbau, as the work is commonly termed. The book uncovers the influences of such neglected figures as Gerhards, Driesch, Ziehen, and Ostwald. It also presents new evidence on influences of well-known figures in philosophy, including Husserl, Rickert, Schlick, and Neurath. In addition, the book offers comparisons of the Aufbau with the work of contemporary scientists such as Weyl and Wiener as well as features new archival findings on the early Carnap.This book will appeal to researchers and students with an interest in the history and philosophy of science, history of analytic philosophy, the philosophy of the Vienna Circle, and the philosophy in interwar Germany and Austria.
Examining the scholarly interest of the last two decades in the origins of logical empiricism, and especially the roots of Rudolf Carnap’s Der logische Aufbau der Welt (The Logical Structure of the World), Rosado Haddock challenges the received view, according to which that book should be inserted in the empiricist tradition. In The Young Carnap's Unknown Master Rosado Haddock, builds on the interpretations of Aufbau propounded by Verena Mayer and of Carnap's earlier thesis Der Raum propounded by Sahotra Sarkar and offers instead the most detailed and complete argument on behalf of an Husserlian interpretation of both of these early works of Carnap, as well as offering a refutation of the rival Machian, Kantian, Neo-Kantian, and other more eclectic interpretations of the influences on the work of the young Carnap. The book concludes with an assessment of Quine's critique of Carnap's 'analytic-synthetic' distinction and a criticism of the direction that analytic philosophy has taken in following in the footsteps of Quine's views.
Despite an ever-growing scholarly interest in the work of Edmund Husserl and in the history of the phenomenological movement, much of the contemporaneous scholarly context surrounding Husserl's work remains shrouded in darkness. While much has been written about the critiques of Husserl's work associated with Heidegger, Levinas, and Sartre, comparatively little is known of the debates that Husserl was directly involved in. The present volume addresses this gap in scholarship by presenting a comprehensive selection of contemporaneous responses to Husserl's work. Ranging in date from 1906 to 1917, these texts bookend Husserl's landmark Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy (1913). The selection encompasses essays that Husserl responded to directly in the Ideas I, as well as a number of the critical and sympathetic essays that appeared in the wake of its publication. Significantly, the present volume also includes Husserl's subsequent responses to his critics. All of the texts included have been translated into English for the first time, introducing the reader to a wide range of long-neglected material that is highly relevant to contemporary debates regarding the meaning and possibility of phenomenology.
When the world in which philosophers need to work and on which they ought to reflect starts changing rapidly, asking questions about the nature of her discipline becomes especially pressing for the philosopher. When new scholarly disciplines pop up radically restructuring the academic world, problems concerning the place of philosophy among other disciplines need to be addressed. When new kinds of problems enter the world and the public consciousness, philosophers have to be able to tell whether their conceptual tools make them suitable to deal with them. And when the very purpose and nature of academic research and scholarship transforms due to technological, social, and economical advancements, philosophy has to redefine its place in academia and society.
Examining the scholarly interest of the last two decades in the origins of logical empiricism, and especially the roots of Rudolf Carnap's Der logische Aufbau der Welt (The Logical Structure of the World), Rosado Haddock challenges the received view, according to which that book should be inserted in the empiricist tradition.
John von Neumann (1903-1957) was undoubtedly one of the scientific geniuses of the 20th century. The main fields to which he contributed include various disciplines of pure and applied mathematics, mathematical and theoretical physics, logic, theoretical computer science, and computer architecture. Von Neumann was also actively involved in politics and science management and he had a major impact on US government decisions during, and especially after, the Second World War. There exist several popular books on his personality and various collections focusing on his achievements in mathematics, computer science, and economy. Strangely enough, to date no detailed appraisal of his seminal contributions to the mathematical foundations of quantum physics has appeared. Von Neumann's theory of measurement and his critique of hidden variables became the touchstone of most debates in the foundations of quantum mechanics. Today, his name also figures most prominently in the mathematically rigorous branches of contemporary quantum mechanics of large systems and quantum field theory. And finally - as one of his last lectures, published in this volume for the first time, shows - he considered the relation of quantum logic and quantum mechanical probability as his most important problem for the second half of the twentieth century. The present volume embraces both historical and systematic analyses of his methodology of mathematical physics, and of the various aspects of his work in the foundations of quantum physics, such as theory of measurement, quantum logic, and quantum mechanical entropy. The volume is rounded off by previously unpublished letters and lectures documenting von Neumann's thinking about quantum theory after his 1932 Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics. The general part of the Yearbook contains papers emerging from the Institute's annual lecture series and reviews of important publications of philosophy of science and its history.
This open-access book is the first to investigate the roots of Logical Empiricism in the context of the Life Reform and the German Youth Movements. Rudolf Carnap and Hans Reichenbach are the key protagonists; they both belonged to the German Youth Movement and developed their early philosophical views in this setting. By combining scholarly essays with unpublished and hard to access manuscripts, letters, and articles, this volume recasts our understanding of the early years of Logical Empiricism.
Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970), one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century, helped found logical positivism, was one of the originators of the field of philosophy of science, and was a leading contributor to semantics and inductive logic. This volume of new essays, written by leading international experts, places Carnap in his philosophical context and studies his topics, his interests, and the major stages of his thought. The essays reassess Carnap's place in the history of analytic philosophy through his approach to metaphysics, values, politics, epistemology and philosophy of science. They delve into important topics of Carnap's mature thought, namely explication, naturalism, and his defence of analyticity; and they recover the logical and the linguistic components of philosophy and how they unfolded in the syntax-semantics relation, induction, and language-planning. The resulting interpretation of Carnap will be illuminating for both current and future research.
"Central Works of Philosophy" is a major multi-volume collection of essays on the core texts of the Western philosophical tradition. From Plato's "Republic" to the present day, the five volumes range over 2,500 years of philosophical writing covering the best, most representative, and most influential work of some of our greatest philosophers. Each essay has been specially commissioned and provides an overview of the work, clear and authoritative exposition of its central ideas, and an assessment of the work's importance. Together these books provide an unrivaled companion for studying and reading philosophy, one that introduces the reader to the masterpieces of the western philosophical canon. The period, 1900-60, which this volume covers, witnessed changes in logical and linguistic analysis far beyond anything dreamt of in the previous history of the subject. The volume begins with chapters on the key texts of the Cambridge philosophers, Moore, Russell and Wittgenstein, which together marked the emergence of analytical philosophy. The Vienna Circle of the 1920s, and the development of logical positivism in the 1930s and 1940s are represented by chapters on two fundamental works by Carnap and Ayer. William James' "Pragmatism," which formulated pragmatism's epistemology and made it known throughout the world represents in the volume the distinctive ideas of the American pragmatists. Essays on Husserl's "The Idea of Phenomenology," Heidegger's "Being and Time," Sartre's "Being and Nothingness" and Merleau-Ponty's "Phenomenology of Perception" cover the core texts of the hugely significant phenomenological movement. Of the linguistic philosophy that dominated the English-speaking world in the immediate postwar years, Wittgenstein's "Philosophical Investigations" and Ryle's "The Concept of the Mind" are discussed in turn. The volume concludes with Karl Popper's influential account of the nature of science. Volume 4 covers the key works of philosophy written in the period 1900-60, which witnessed developments in logical and linguistic analysis far beyond anything dreamt of in the previous history of the subject. The volume includes chapters on central works by the Cambridge philosophers Moore, Russell and Wittgenstein, which together contributed to the emergence of analytic philosophy. The ideas of the Vienna Circle of the 1920s, and the logical positivism of the 1930s and 1940s are explored in chapters dealing with the works of Carnap and Ayer, and the distinctive ideas of the American pragmatists are discussed in a chapter on William James' Pragmatism, which propagated pragmatism by presenting its central tenets in a clear and accessible form. Essays on Husserl's "The Idea of Phenomenology," Heidegger's "Being and Time," Sartre's "Being and Nothingness" and Merleau-Ponty's "Phenomenology of Perception" cover the core texts of the continental European traditions of phenomenology and existentialism. Of the linguistic philosophy that dominated the English-speaking world in the immediate postwar years, Wittgenstein's "Philosophical Investigations" and Ryle's "The Concept of Mind" are discussed in turn. The volume concludes with a chapter on Karl Popper's influential account of the nature of scientific method in his seminal work, "The Logic of Scientific Discovery."
