Ways of the Scientific World-Conception. Rudolf Carnap and Otto Neurath
Ways of the Scientific World-Conception. Rudolf Carnap and Otto Neurath

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2024-07-25

Total Pages: 382

ISBN-13: 9004680209

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Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970) and Otto Neurath (1882-1945) had a decisive influence on the development of the scientific world view of logical empiricism. Their relationship was marked by mutual intellectual stimulation, close collaboration, and personal friendship, but also by controversies that were as heated as they were rarely fought out in public. Carnap and Neurath were, in the words of Olga Hahn-Neurath, "like-minded opponents". The essays in this volume deal with these key thinkers of logical empiricism from different perspectives, shedding light on the complex development of one of the most influential philosophical currents of the twentieth century in the midst of dark times.

Logical Empiricism at Its Peak
Logical Empiricism at Its Peak

Author: Moritz Schlick

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 424

ISBN-13: 9780815322634

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First Published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Logical Empiricism and Naturalism
Logical Empiricism and Naturalism

Author: Joseph Bentley

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2023-06-01

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 3031293282

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This text provides an extensive exploration of the relationship between the thought of Otto Neurath and Rudolf Carnap, providing a new argument for the complementarity of their mature philosophies as part of a collaborative metatheory of science. In arguing that both Neurath and Carnap must be interpreted as proponents of epistemological naturalism, and that their naturalisms rest on shared philosophical ground, it is also demonstrated that the boundaries and possibilities for epistemological naturalism are not as restrictive as Quinean orthodoxy has previously suggested. Both building on and challenging the scholarship of the past four decades, this naturalist reading of Carnap also provides a new interpretation of Carnap’s conception of analyticity, allowing for a refutation of the Quinean argument for the incompatibility of naturalism and the analytic/synthetic distinction. In doing so, the relevance and potential importance of their scientific meta-theory for contemporary questions in the philosophy of science is demonstrated. This text appeals to students and researchers working on Logical Empiricism, Quine, the history of analytic philosophy and the history of philosophy of science, as well as proponents of naturalized epistemology.

Philosophical Papers 1913–1946
Philosophical Papers 1913–1946

Author: M. Neurath

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 351

ISBN-13: 9400969953

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The philosophical writings of Otto Neurath, and their central themes, have been described many times, by Carnap in his authobiographical essay, by Ayer and Morris and Kraft decades ago, by Haller and Hegselmann and Nemeth and others in recent years. How extraordinary Neurath's insights were, even when they perhaps were more to be seen as conjectures, aperfus, philosophical hypotheses, tools to be taken up and used in the practical workshop of life; and how prescient he was. A few examples may be helpful: (1) Neurath's 1912 lecture on the conceptual critique of the idea of a pleasure maximum [ON 50] substantially anticipates the development of aspects of analytical ethics in mid-century. (2) Neurath's 1915 paper on alternative hypotheses, and systems of hypotheses, within the science of physical optics [ON 81] gives a lucid account of the historically-developed clashing theories of light, their un realized further possibilities, and the implied contingencies of theory survival in science, all within his framework that antedates not only the quite similar work of Kuhn so many years later but also of the Vienna Circle too. (3) Neurath's subsequent paper of 1916 investigates the inadequacies of various attempts to classify systems of hypotheses [ON 82, and this volume], and sets forth a pioneering conception of the metatheoretical task of scientific philosophy.

The Unity of Science
The Unity of Science

Author: Rudolf Carnap

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-05-13

Total Pages: 71

ISBN-13: 1136654283

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As a leading member of the Vienna Circle, Rudolph Carnap's aim was to bring about a "unified science" by applying a method of logical analysis to the empirical data of all the sciences. This work, first published in English in 1934, endeavors to work out a way in which the observation statements required for verification are not private to the observer. The work shows the strong influence of Wittgenstein, Russell, and Frege.

Otto Neurath
Otto Neurath

Author: Nancy Cartwright

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1996-02

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 0521451744

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An international team of four authors, led by distinguished philosopher of science, Nancy Cartwright, and leading scholar of the Vienna Circle, Thomas E. Uebel, have produced this lucid and elegant study of a much-neglected figure. The book, which depicts Neurath's science in the political, economic and intellectual milieu in which it was practised, is divided into three sections: Neurath's biographical background and the socio-political context of his economic ideas; the development of his theory of science; and his legacy as illustrated by his contemporaneous involvement in academic and political debates. Coinciding with the renewal of interest in logical positivism, this is a timely publication which will redress a current imbalance in the history and philosophy of science, as well as making a major contribution to our understanding of the intellectual life of Austro-Germany in the inter-war years.

Encyclopedia and Utopia
Encyclopedia and Utopia

Author: E. Nemeth

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 1996-11-30

Total Pages: 426

ISBN-13: 9780792341611

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The present Volume 4 of the Vienna Circle Yearbook is dedicated to Otto Neurath, one of the leading figures of the Vienna Circle and one of last polymaths representative of the vanished culture from which the Circle emerged. Situating Neurath's work between the topoi of Encyclopedism - as a theoretical, scientific tool of the `unfinished' project of (post-) enlightenment - and Utopianism - as the resolve to work for the systematic improvement of society and science - this volume presents the most recent research as well as critical and updated surveys and assessments of Neurath's many-faceted and impressive life work. The contributions range from history and philosophy of science, epistemology, sociology and economics to pictorial statistics (ISOTYPE) and museology. Special attention is given to Neurath's methodological holism and epistemological naturalism, as well as to the interrelations of the different disciplines in Neurath's conception of the Unity of Science. Most contributors agree that the historical and systematic reconstruction of Neurath's conception of science leads to issues of crucial relevance to the ongoing task of sharpening the instrument that is science for its responsible application in the natural and social world. The volume also includes Neurath's previously unpublished full manuscript on visual education, a report on archival holdings concerning Neurath's work and a review section focusing on recent publications on Neurath and Logical Empiricism. An overview of the activities of the Institute Vienna Circle 1996/97 concludes the volume. Audience: Philosophers in general, philosophers of science and historians of science, and sociologists. The book will also interest scholars specialized in adult education, museology and economics.

The Vienna Circle
The Vienna Circle

Author: Friedrich Stadler

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2015-05-08

Total Pages: 702

ISBN-13: 3319165615

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This abridged and revised edition of the original book (Springer-Wien-New York: 2001) offers the only comprehensive history and documentation of the Vienna Circle based on new sources with an innovative historiographical approach to the study of science. With reference to previously unpublished archival material and more recent literature, it refutes a number of widespread clichés about "neo-positivism" or "logical positivism". Following some insights on the relation between the history of science and the philosophy of science, the book offers an accessible introduction to the complex subject of "the rise of scientific philosophy” in its socio-cultural background and European philosophical networks till the forced migration in the Anglo-Saxon world. The first part of the book focuses on the origins of Logical Empiricism before World War I and the development of the Vienna Circle in "Red Vienna" (with the "Verein Ernst Mach"), its fate during Austro-Fascism (Schlick's murder 1936) and its final expulsion by National-Socialism beginning with the "Anschluß" in 1938. It analyses the dynamics of the Schlick-Circle in the intellectual context of "late enlightenment" including the minutes of the meetings from 1930 on for the first time published and presents an extensive description of the meetings and international Unity of Science conferences between 1929 and 1941. The chapters introduce the leading philosophers of the Schlick Circle (e.g., Hans Hahn, Otto Neurath, Rudolf Carnap, Philipp Frank, Felix Kaufmann, Edgar Zilsel) and describe the conflicting interaction between Moritz Schlick and Otto Neurath, the long term communication between Moritz Schlick, Friedrich Waismann and Ludwig Wittgenstein, as well as between the Vienna Circle with Heinrich Gomperz and Karl Popper. In addition, Karl Menger's "Mathematical Colloquium" with Kurt Gödel is presented as a parallel movement. The final chapter of this section describes the demise of the Vienna Circle and the forced exodus of scientists and intellectuals from Austria. The second part of the book includes a bio-bibliographical documentation of the Vienna Circle members and for the first time of the assassination of Moritz Schlick in 1936, followed by an appendix comprising an extensive list of sources and literature.

The Cambridge Companion to Logical Empiricism
The Cambridge Companion to Logical Empiricism

Author: Alan Richardson

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2007-09-03

Total Pages: 624

ISBN-13: 1139826433

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If there is a movement or school that epitomizes analytic philosophy in the middle of the twentieth century, it is logical empiricism. Logical empiricists created a scientifically and technically informed philosophy of science, established mathematical logic as a topic in and tool for philosophy, and initiated the project of formal semantics. Accounts of analytic philosophy written in the middle of the twentieth century gave logical empiricism a central place in the project. The second wave of interpretative accounts was constructed to show how philosophy should progress, or had progressed, beyond logical empiricism. The essays survey the formative stages of logical empiricism in central Europe and its acculturation in North America, discussing its main topics, and achievements and failures, in different areas of philosophy of science, and assessing its influence on philosophy, past, present, and future.

Carnap and the Vienna Circle
Carnap and the Vienna Circle

Author: Ramon Cirera

Publisher: Rodopi

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 418

ISBN-13: 9789051837247

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It is not inacurate to say that from 1928 to 1936 Carnap was a member of the Vienna Circle, even though during this period he was not always present in Vienna. During this years, which spanned roughly the period from the Aufbauto Testability and Meaning, he worked or at least discussed frequently with the members of the group.However, traditionally it has been difficult to form a proper view of the development of Carnap's ideas throughout this period, mainly because of three errors which have persisted in the commonly accepted historical interpretation of Carnap and the Vienna Circle: emphasis on the Circle as a unit rather than a collective of individuals; insistence on verificationism as the defining characteristic of Logical Positivism; and the systematic abstraction of the work of the Circle from its historical context. As against this historically distorted image, this book argues for an alternative reading, evaluating the different influences on Carnap of Schlick, Wittgenstein, Neurath and Popper, and making sense of Carnap's evolution from physicalism to phenomenalism and the syntactic point of view.