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Philosophy of biology is often said to have emerged in the last third of the twentieth century. Prior to this time, it has been alleged that the only authors who engaged philosophically with the life sciences were eitherlogical empiricists who sought to impose the explanatory ideals of the physical sciences onto biology, or vitalists who invoked mystical agencies in an attempt to ward off the threat of physicochemical reduction. These schools paid little attention to actual biological science, and (...) as a result philosophy of biology languished in a state of futility for much of the twentieth century. The situation, we are told, only began to change in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when a new generation of researchers began to focus on problems internal to biology, leading to the consolidation of the discipline. In this paper we challenge this widely accepted narrative of the history of philosophy of biology. We do so by arguing that the most important tradition within early twentieth-century philosophy of biology was neitherlogicalempiricism nor vitalism, but the organicist movement that flourished between the First and Second World Wars. We show that the organicist corpus is thematically and methodologically continuous with the contemporary literature in order to discredit the view that early work in the philosophy of biology was unproductive, and we emphasize the desirability of integrating the historical and contemporary conversations into a single, unified discourse. (shrink)

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This Element offers a new account of the philosophical significance oflogicalempiricism that relies on the past forty years of literature reassessing the project. It argues that whilelogicalempiricism was committed toempiricism and did become tied to the trajectory of analytic philosophy, neitherempiricism norlogical analysis per se was the deepest philosophical commitment oflogicalempiricism. That commitment was, rather, securing the scientific status of philosophy, bringing philosophy (...) into a scientific conception of the world. (shrink)

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Thelogical empiricists expressed a consistent attitude to racial categorisation in both the ethical and scientific spheres. Their attitude may be captured in the following slogan: human racial taxonomy is an empirically meaningful mode of classifying persons that we should refrain from deploying. I offer an interpretation of their position that would render coherent their remarks on race with positions they adopted on the scientific status of taxonomy in general, together with their potential moral or political motivations for adopting (...) that position. (shrink)

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This book explores the complexity of two philosophical traditions, extending from their origins to the current developments in neopragmatism. Chapters deal with the first encounters of these traditions and beyond, looking at metaphysics and the Vienna circle as well as semantics and the principle of tolerance. There is a general consensus that North-American (neo-)pragmatism and EuropeanLogicalEmpiricism were converging philosophical traditions, especially after the forced migration of the European Philosophers. But readers will discover a pluralist image of (...) this relation and interaction with an obvious family resemblance. This work clarifies and specifies the common features and differences of these currents since the beginning of their mutual scientific communication in the 19th century. The book draws on collaboration between authors and philosophers from Vienna, Tübingen, and Helsinki, and their networks. It will appeal to philosophers, scholars in the history of philosophy, philosophers of science, pragmatists and beyond. (shrink)

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The historicist project that Richardson presents here aims to recover elements ofLogicalEmpiricism that lie not in theorems but in the self-understanding of the actors. TheLogical Empiricists had philosophical as well as social and political goals in mind. They were aware that the scientific principles they sought to establish in academic philosophy also influenced the political, social, and cultural spheres. Previous research has worked on the social embedding ofLogicalEmpiricism. By comparison, Richardson (...) proposes the significantly broader framework of “scientific philosophy.” This allows further actors to be taken into account, thus contributing to a better understanding of the self-understanding of theLogical Empiricists. But can this historicist project convince us thatLogicalEmpiricism is “worth caring about”? (shrink)

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This volume has two primary aims: to trace the traditions and changes in methods, concepts, and ideas that brought forth thelogical empiricists’ philosophy of physics and to present and analyze thelogical empiricists’ various and occasionally contrary ideas about the physical sciences and their philosophical relevance. These original chapters discuss these developments in their original contexts and social and institutional environments, thus showing the various fruitful conceptions and philosophies behind the history of 20th-century philosophy of science. (...) class='Hi'>LogicalEmpiricism and the Natural Sciences is divided into three thematic sections. Part I surveys the influences onlogicalempiricism’s philosophy of science and physics. It features chapters on Maxwell’s role in the worldview oflogicalempiricism, on Reichenbach’s account of objectivity, on the impact of Poincaré on Neurath’s early views on scientific method, Frank’s exchanges with Einstein about philosophy of physics, and on the forgotten role of Kurt Grelling. Part II focuses on specific physical theories, including Carnap’s and Reichenbach’s positions on Einstein’s theory of general relativity, Reichenbach’s critique of unified field theory, and thelogical empiricists’ reactions to quantum mechanics. The third and final group of chapters widens the scope to philosophy of science and physics in general. It includes contributions on von Mises’ frequentism; Frank’s account of concept formation and confirmation; and the interrelations between Nagel’s, Feigl’s, and Hempel’s versions oflogicalempiricism. (shrink)

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This paper contributes to explaining the rise oflogicalempiricism in mid-twentieth century (North) America and to a better understanding of American philosophy of science before the dominance oflogicalempiricism. We show that, contrary to a number of existing histories, philosophy of science was already a distinct subfield of philosophy, one with its own approaches and issues, even beforelogical empiricists arrived in America. It was a form of speculative philosophy with a concern for (...) speculative metaphysics, normative issues relating to science and society and issues which later were associated withlogical empiricist philosophy of science, issues such as confirmation, scientific explanation, reductionism and laws of nature. Further, philosophy of science was not primarily pragmatist in orientation. We also show, with the help of our historical characterization, that a recent account of the emergence of analytic philosophy applies to the rise oflogicalempiricism. It has been argued that the emergence of American analytic philosophy is partly explained by analytic philosophers’ use of key institutions, including of journals, to marginalize speculative philosophy and promote analytic philosophy. We argue that this use of institutions included the marginalization of speculative and value-laden philosophy of science and the promotion oflogicalempiricism. (shrink)

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This paper considers George A. Reisch’s account of the role of Cold War political forces in shaping the apolitical stance that came to dominate philosophy of science in the late 1940s and 1950s. It argues that at least as early as the 1930s,Logical Empiricists such as Rudolf Carnap already held that philosophy of science could not properly have political aims, and further suggests that political forces alone cannot explain this view’s rise to dominance during the Cold War, since (...) political forces cannot explain why a philosophy of science with liberal democratic, anti-communist aims did not flourish. The paper then argues that if professionalization is understood in the right way, it might point toward an explanation of the apolitical stance of Cold War philosophy of science. (shrink)

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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 onLogicalEmpiricism, Quine, the history of analytic philosophy and the history of philosophy of science, as well as proponents of naturalized epistemology. (shrink)

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I give a revision (“reload”) of an earlier paper on logico-empiricism’s philosophy of biology by checking its central theses against the background of the international conferences of Prague (1934), Paris (1935), and Copenhagen (1936), so important for the development oflogicalempiricism and its spread in the western world. My theses are thatlogicalempiricism did not contribute in the same way to the development of philosophy of biology, as it did e.g. to the development (...) of philosophy of mathematics or physics. The reasons for this failure were: (1)logical empiricists were unexperienced in biological science. (2) They concentrated on an unproductive ('ideological') framework (anti-vitalism, reduction) that they took to be philosophy of biology. (3) This prevented them from dealing with actual problems of biological science. Between the various sections of the paper, I insert “intermezzos” that present several conference participants in a wider historical context (Great War, persecution, language). (shrink)

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Islogicalempiricism incompatible with a critical social science? The longstanding assumption that it is incompatible has been prominent in recent debates about welfare economics. Sen’s development of a critical and descriptively rich welfare economics is taken by writers such as Putnam, Walsh and Sen to involve the excising of the influence oflogicalempiricism on neo-classical economics. However, this view stands in contrast to the descriptively rich contributions to political economy of members of the left (...) Vienna Circle, such as Otto Neurath. This paper considers the compatibility of the meta-theoretical commitments of Neurath and others in thelogical empiricist tradition with this first-order critical political economy. (shrink)

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"An essential overview of an important intellectual movement,LogicalEmpiricism in North America offers the first significant, sustained, and multidisciplinary attempt to understand the intellectual, cultural, and political dimensions of ...

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Adopting a central feature of Stoic epistemology, Descartes treated belief as action that might be undertaken wisely or rashly, and enunciated a method for avoiding false belief, a discipline of the will “to include nothing more in my judgments than what presented itself to my mind with such clarity and distinctness that I would have no occasion to put it in doubt”.1 He called such acts of the will “affirmations”, i.e., acts of accepting sentences or propositions as true.

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Scientific realism is the view that the theoretical entities of science exist. Atoms, forces, electromagnetic fields, and so on, are not merely instruments for organizing observational data but are real and causally effective. This view seems to be hardly compatible with thelogical empiricist agenda: As common wisdom has it,logicalempiricism is mainly characterized by a strong verification criterion of meaning, i.e., by the project of defining the meaning of theoretical terms by virtue of the meaning (...) of purely observational terms. However, it has been largely ignored by the historians oflogicalempiricism that there indeed existed a realist faction within thelogical empiricist movement. (shrink)

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This collection of essays reexamines the origins oflogicalempiricism and offers fresh insights into its relationship to contemporary philosophy of science.

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The fundamental tenet oflogicalempiricism is that the warrant for all scientific knowledge rests upon empirical evidence in conjunction with logic, where logic is taken to include induction or confirmation, as well as mathematics and formal logic (see evidence and confirmation). This appears to conflict strongly with Thomas Kuhn's famous statement that scientific theory choice depends on considerations that go beyond observation and logic, even when logic is construed so as to include confirmation (see kuhn and pragmatic (...) factors in theory acceptance).Logical empiricists deny the possibility of synthetic a priori knowledge ‐ that is, substantive knowledge of the world based on pure reason. Those who, with W. V. Quine, reject the analytic/synthetic distinction, would, I suppose, question the possibility of a priori knowledge altogether (see quine). Contemporarylogical empiricists disagree, however, about such basic issues as the nature of empirical evidence, the status and structure of confirmation or inductive inference, the nature of scientific explanation, and the character of scientific theories, to name but a few examples (see theories; explanation; confirmation, paradoxes of). (shrink)

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LogicalEmpiricism is commonly regarded as uninterested in, if not hostile to sociological investigations of science. This paper reconstructs the views of Otto Neurath and Philipp Frank on the legitimacy and relevance of sociological investigations of theory choice. It is argued that while there obtains a surprising degree of convergence between their programmatic pronouncements and the Strong Programme, the two types of project nevertheless remain distinct. The key to this differences lies in the different assessment of a supposed (...) dilemma facing post-Mertonian sociologists of science. (shrink)

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The final work of the esteemed philosopher William Demopoulos supplantslogicalempiricism's accounts of physical theories, which fail to satisfactorily engage modern physics. Arguing for a new appreciation of the tightly woven character of theory and evidence, Demopoulos offers novel insights into the distinctive nature of quantum reality.

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At different timeslogical empiricists engaged one another in debates about the proper problems and methods for philosophy or its successor discipline. The most pressing problem focused on how to coordinate the abstract statements of the sciences with what can be experienced and tested. While the new logic was the main tool for coordination for Moritz Schlick, Hans Reichenbach, and Rudolf Carnap, there was no agreement on the nature of logic or its role in coordination. Otto Neurath and Philipp (...) Frank countered with a sophisticated alternative that emphasized the social and political context within which science is done. All told, one finds inlogicalempiricism a high level of methodological awareness as well as a healthy skepticism about the appropriate aims and methods of philosophy. (shrink)

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While the members of the school ofLogicalEmpiricism may differ in various details, nearly all of them are opposed to metaphysics on the ground that a scientific metaphysics is the only possible one. All philosophy is to become scientific. This assumption is based on their epistemological criterion of verifiability which appears to be a basic doctrine of this school. The implications of this doctrine have not been worked out in detail by many, but one of the most (...) explicit accounts has been given by A. J. Ayer in his book on Language, Truth and Logic, which can be taken as a representative work in its attack on metaphysics. (shrink)

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최근의 과학철학 논의에서 중요한 비중을 차지하는 주제 중 하나가 ‘과학적 실재론(scientific realism)’이다. 과학적 실재론은 토머스 쿤(Thomas Kuhn)의 『과학혁명의 구조』(1962) 속 역사적 연구를 그 논의 배경으로 한다. 대개 실재론자는 “최선의 설명으로의 추론(Inference to the Best Explanation)”을 근거로 실재론적 관점을, 반실재론자는 “비관적 귀납(Pessimistic Induction)”을 근거로 반실재론적 관점을 주장한다. 이때 많은 경우 논리경험주의의 철학적 관점은 ‘반실재론적 관점’에 포함된다고 전제된다. 그런데 최근의 과학철학사 연구에 따르면 논리경험주의 내에서 반실재론이 아닌 ‘실재론적 관점’을 여럿 발견할 수 있다. 그러므로 토머스 쿤의 ‘역사적 전회’ 이전에 등장한 논리경험주의 판본의 실재론이 (...) 갖는 정체를 파악할 필요가 있다. 실재론적 관점을 취한 논리경험주의자로 슐리크(Schlick), 카르납(Carnap), 파이글(Feigl) 등 여럿 있지만, 이 논문에서 나는 논리경험주의 철학자 한스 라이헨바흐(Hans Reichenbach)의 실재론에 초점을 맞춰 논한다. 그것은 그가 『경험과 예측』(1938) 에서 명시적으로 일종의 실재론적 관점을 제시했으며, 그가 이후 발전시킨 인과 이론 역시 강한 실재론적 특성을 갖기 때문이다. 『경험과 예측』에서 라이헨바흐는 그의 실재론을 카르납의 실증주의적 관점에 대비하여 전개했다. 카르납은 『세계의 논리적 구조』(1928)에서 물리적 대상의 개념이 감각 인상 명제들의 집합으로 ‘환원(reduct)’ 된다고 주장했다. 반면 라이헨바흐는 물리적 대상 개념에는 감각 인상 명제들의 집합으로 환원되지 않는 여분의 의미가 있고, 이 개념은 감각 인상 명제보다 덜 확실하나 더 직관적인 일상적 관측 명제로부터 ‘투영(project)’되며, 이때 투영은 ‘확률적 추론(probabilistic inference)’에 기반한다고 주장했다. 확률적 투영에 기반한 이러한 실재론적 관점에 관해 과학철학자 마티아스 노이버(Matthias Neuber)는 라이헨바흐가 이와 동시에 실재론의 문제를 일종의 ‘언어 선택의 문제’로도 취급하려 했다는 점에서 불완전하므로 결국 실패한다고 진단했다. 그러나 내가 볼 때 ‘확률적 실재론’과 ‘언어 선택의 문제로서의 실재론’은 노이버의 주장과 달리 서로 상충하지 않는다. 왜냐하면 실재론적 언어와 실증주의적 언어는 ‘도출된 결정들(entailed decisions)’에 있어 서로 차별화되기 때문이다. 그리고 이러한 차별화는 언어 선택이 ‘의지적 선택(volitional decision)’이 아닌 ‘의지적 분기(volitional bifurcation)’이며，이러한 ‘의지적 분기’는 세계의 객관적인 ‘인과적 효력(causal effect)’에 기반하기 때문에 가능하다. (shrink)

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Much feminist philosophy of science has been developed as a reaction againstlogicalempiricism and the associated view that social factors play no role in good science. Recent accounts of the Vienna Circle that highlighted the ways in which some of its members attempted to combine theirempiricism with emancipatory politics are used here as a basis on which to reassess the relationship betweenlogicalempiricism and feminism. The focus is chiefly on Otto Neurath.

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Alan Richardson’s short book on the history and significance oflogicalempiricism not only illuminates the importance oflogical empiricists’ projects, but also tells us something useful about the ways we choose to do philosophy in the first place. The book’s primary task is providing us with a critical re-evaluation of the legacy oflogicalempiricism; in doing so, it raises several important metaphilosophical questions. In this article, I will outline three such issues that I (...) think Richardson’s piece brings out and consider some of their impacts on philosophical practice. First, there is the question of philosophical canons and how we teach the history of philosophy. A second related question is how we classify and understand philosophical positions and movements. And the last question I will discuss throughlogicalempiricism is the extent to which we should and can view academic work as morally and politically neutral. (shrink)

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Logicalempiricism is commonly seen as a counter-position to scientific realism. In the present paper it is shown that there indeed existed a realist faction within thelogical empiricist movement. In particular, I shall point out that at least four types of realistic arguments can be distinguished within this faction: Reichenbach’s ‘probabilistic argument,’ Feigl’s ‘pragmatic argument,’ Hempel’s ‘indispensability argument,’ and Kaila’s ‘invariantist argument.’ All these variations of arguments are intended to prevent thelogical empiricist agenda from (...) the shortcomings of radical positivism, instrumentalism, and other forms of scientific antirealism. On the whole, it will be seen thatlogicalempiricism and scientific realism are essentially compatible with each other. Especially Kaila’s invariantist approach to science (and nature) comes quite close to what nowadays is discussed under the label ‘structural realism.’ This, in turn, necessitates a fundamental reevaluation of Kaila’s role in thelogical empiricist movement in particular and in twentieth-century philosophy of science in general. (shrink)

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In this article, I seek to shed new light on a lesser-known stage of the development of Hans Reichenbach’s thought, namely his research, output and teaching activities at Istanbul University. I argue that the experience of Turkish exile was decisive in the elaboration of Reichenbach’s probability theory of meaning and knowledge. His work Experience and Prediction, produced while in Istanbul, should therefore be put in its Turkish context of elaboration and reception. To this end, I will take into consideration not (...) only Reichenbach’s efforts to popularize and extend the Berlin Group’s program of scientific philosophy in Turkey and throughout Europe in the 1930s, but also the forgotten work of Reichenbach’s students—most of them women—at Istanbul University. (shrink)

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I criticize conceptual pluralism, as endorsed recently by John Dupre and Philip Kitcher, for failing to supply strategies for demarcating science from non-science. Using creation-science as a test case, I argue that pluralism blocks arguments that keep creation-science in check and that metaphysical pluralism offers it positive, metaphysical support.Logicalempiricism, however, still provides useful resources to reconfigure and manage the problem of creation-science in those practical and political contexts where pluralism will fail.

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The global relation betweenlogicalempiricism and American pragmatism is one of the more difficult problems in history of philosophy. In this paper I’d like to take a local perspective and concentrate on the details that concern the vicissitudes of a philosopher who played an important role in the encounter oflogicalempiricism and American pragmatism, namely, Ernest Nagel. In this paper, I want to explore some aspects of Nagel’s changing attitude towards the then „new“ (...) class='Hi'>logical-empiricist philosophy. In the beginning Nagel welcomedlogicalempiricism whole-heartedly. This early enthusiasm did not last. At the end of his philosophical career Nagel’s early positive attitude towardslogicalempiricism shown in the 1930s had been replaced by a much more reserved one. Nagel’s growing dissatisfaction with the Carnapian version oflogical empiricist philosophy was clearly expressed in Nagel’s criticism of Carnap’s inductive logic and more generally in his last book Teleology Revisited and Other Essays on History and Philosophy of Science. There he critized harshly Carnap’s philosophy of science in general as ahistoric and non-pragmatist. One of the distinctive features of Nagel’s philosophy of science is the emphasis that he put on the role of history of science for philosophy of science. A compelling evidence for this attitude are his works on the history and philosophy of geometry and algebra One may say that Carnap and Nagel represented opposed possibilities of how the profession of a philosopher of science could be understood: Carnap as a „conceptual engineer“ was engaged in the task of inventing the conceptual tools for a better theoretical understanding of science, while Nagel was to be considered more as a „public intellectual“ engaged in the project of realizing a more rational and enlightened society. (shrink)

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There is a certain dominant tradition, school, ambiance or intellectual community in contemporary philosophy of science which can conveniently be labelledlogicalempiricism. Now a curious and (I believe) hitherto unremarked change occurred in the accepted methodology oflogicalempiricism shortly after the end of World War II. Before then accepted forms of argument for philosophical theses about the logic, analysis, or rational reconstruction of science fell into two main categories. Some arguments appealed to familiar or (...) historically attestable facts about the development of science, the declared aims of scientists, etc. in certain areas. Others appealed to criteria of generality, clarity, accuracy, consistency, simplicity, and similar considerations of a systematic nature in the construction of philosophical analyses. Appeals were rarely, if ever, made at that time to intuition. If an intuitive idea was mentioned at all, it was mentioned as something that might suggest a starting-point of enquiry but could not be relied upon, even presumptively, as the ground for a conclusion. But this situation changed markedly from the late '40's onwards. Many arguments came to be rested, quite explicitly, on the alleged intuitive acceptability of certain premisses. In the Carnapian school, for example, the guiding objective of an inductive logician seems no longer to be the rational reconstruction of scientific reasoning but rather the axiomatisation of his own intuitions by the most sophisticated methods available. (shrink)

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A new direction in philosophy Between 1920 and 1940logicalempiricism reset the direction of philosophy of science and much of the rest of Anglo-American philosophy. It began as a relatively organized movement centered on the Vienna Circle, and like-minded philosophers elsewhere, especially in Berlin. As Europe drifted into the Nazi era, several important figures, especially Carnap and Neurath, also found common ground in their liberal politics and radical social agenda. Together, thelogical empiricists set out to (...) reform traditional philosophy with a new set of doctrines more firmly grounded in logic and science. Criticism and decline Because of Nazi persecution, most of the European adherents oflogicalempiricism moved to the United States in the late 1930s. During the 1940s, many of their most cherished tenets became targets of criticism from outsiders as well as from within their own ranks. Philosophers of science in the late 1950s and 1960s rejectedlogicalempiricism and, starting in the 1970s, presented such alternative programs such as scientific realism with evolutionary epistemology. A resurgence of interest During the early 1980s, philosophers and historians of philosophy began to studylogicalempiricism as an important movement. Unlike their predecessors in the 1960s-for whom the debate overlogicalempiricism now seems to have been largely motivated by professional politics-these philosopher no longer have to take positions for or againstlogicalempiricism. The result has been a more balanced view of that movement, its achievements, its failures, and its influence. Hard-to-find core writings now available This collection makes available a selection of the most influential and representative writings of thelogical empiricists, important contemporary criticisms of their doctrines, their responses, as well as the recent reappraisals. Introductions to each volume examine the articles in historical context and provide importantbackground information that is vital to a full understanding of the issues discussed. They outline prevalent trends, identifying leading figures and summarize their positions and reasoning, as well as those of opposing thinkers. (shrink)

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Eino Kaila’s recently translated Human Knowledge: A Classic Statement ofLogicalEmpiricism from 1939 is an important document both in the history of analytic philosophy and the history oflogicalempiricism in particular. Kaila discusses all the relevant topics that featured in the discussions of the Vienna Circle in the early 1930s and provides a neat summary with his own historical narrative and critical remarks.

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Alogical empiricist “baseline statement” can formalize some propositions established by a body of evidence or set of observations. However, it may not necessarily capture, of two propositions it entails, whether all the subsets of the evidence that establish one proposition also establish the other, vice versa, or neither. Yet, according to this paper, which obtains should sometimes matter for confirmation. It illustrates by showing how this “evidential dependence” can be used to address problems with generalizations of grue-like predicates, (...) and do so still within a very simple broadly Hempelian framework. (shrink)

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In the first half of the 20th century, scientific models were hardly mentioned in philosophy of science. Models were not thought to be central elements of science, in contrast to theories. This attitude can be better understood when considering philosophical trends - Operationalism andLogicalEmpiricism - and scientific developments - the advent of quantum theory and relativity theory. This paper traces the philosophical currents and positions that prevented models from being recognized as playing an important role in (...) science. It goes on to examine why the hostile attitude towards models slowly tempered in the 1950s. The contributions of Mary Hesse and Ernest Hutten are shown to foreshadow recent debates that have arisen in the context of the philosophical study of scientific models. /// Segundo a autora, na primeira metade do século XX, os modelos científicos praticamente não eram mencionados em Filosofia da Ciência. Os modelos não eram considerados como elementos centrais da Ciência, ao contrário das teorias. Para a autora, uma tal atitude pode ser melhor compreendida se se atender ao influxo de importantes movimentos filosóficos, como sejam o Operacionalismo e o Empirismo Lógico, bem como ao impacto de alguns desenvolvimentos científicos, como sejam o aparecimento da teoria quântica e da teoria da relatividade. Nesse sentido, o presente artigo visa estabelecer as correntes filosóficas e as posições científicas que contribuíram para que os modelos não fossem reconhecidos no importante papel que desempenham no desenvolvimento da Ciência. De um modo especial, a autora examina com particular cuidado o lento processo de redução da hostilidade em relação aos modelos durante a década de 50 do século xx. Assim, o artigo mostra de um modo especial até que ponto os contributos de Mary Hesse e de Ernest Hutten foram antecipadores de alguns dos debates mais recentes que se sucederam no contexto do estudo filosófico dos modelos científicos. (shrink)

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A new direction in philosophy Between 1920 and 1940logicalempiricism reset the direction of philosophy of science and much of the rest of Anglo-American philosophy. It began as a relatively organized movement centered on the Vienna Circle, and like-minded philosophers elsewhere, especially in Berlin. As Europe drifted into the Nazi era, several important figures, especially Carnap and Neurath, also found common ground in their liberal politics and radical social agenda. Together, thelogical empiricists set out to (...) reform traditional philosophy with a new set of doctrines more firmly grounded in logic and science. Criticism and decline Because of Nazi persecution, most of the European adherents oflogicalempiricism moved to the United States in the late 1930s. During the 1940s, many of their most cherished tenets became targets of criticism from outsiders as well as from within their own ranks. Philosophers of science in the late 1950s and 1960s rejectedlogicalempiricism and, starting in the 1970s, presented such alternative programs such as scientific realism with evolutionary epistemology. A resurgence of interest During the early 1980s, philosophers and historians of philosophy began to studylogicalempiricism as an important movement. Unlike their predecessors in the 1960s-for whom the debate overlogicalempiricism now seems to have been largely motivated by professional politics-these philosopher no longer have to take positions for or againstlogicalempiricism. The result has been a more balanced view of that movement, its achievements, its failures, and its influence. Hard-to-find core writings now available This collection makes available a selection of the most influential and representative writings of thelogical empiricists, important contemporary criticisms of their doctrines, their responses, as well as the recent reappraisals. Introductions to each volume examine the articles in historical context and provide importantbackground information that is vital to a full understanding of the issues discussed. They outline prevalent trends, identifying leading figures and summarize their positions and reasoning, as well as those of opposing thinkers. (shrink)

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Logical Positivists had a very lively interest in the revolutionary science of their time, but also in modern art and especially in ‘international style’ architecture. Surprisingly they never published a representative volume or longer statement on art and architecture. But: it is not well known that Otto Neurath, their leading organizer and spokesman, invited the eminent art historian and critic Meyer Schapiro to contribute a volume on art to the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science. Schapiro failed to deliver the (...) promised book. But from the extended correspondence and some material in the Schapiro papers one can describe the general direction the thing would have taken. The correspondence is also very interesting, because it also covers questions of the endangered peace and the approaching war, the academic scene in Europe and in the USA, and surprisingly: Martin Heidegger. Neurath died in 1945, but Schapiro came back to the Heidegger theme in 1968 when he wrote his famous harsh criticism of Heidegger’s programmatic long paper “Das Kunstwerk” where he interprets one of Van Gogh’s shoe-paintings. Schapiro’s short article caused much controversy then. (shrink)

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The mainstream of the philosophy of science in the second quarter of this century—the so-called “logical empiricist” or “logical positivist” movement—assumed that theoretical language in science is parasitic upon observation language and can be eliminated from scientific discourse by disinterpretation and formalization, or by explicit definition in or reduction to observational language. But several fashionable views now place the onus on believers in an observation language to show how such a language is meaningful in the absence of a (...) theory.In the present paper, I propose to show whylogical positivism failed to do justice to the basic empirical andlogical problems of philosophy of science. I also wish to consider why the drastic reaction, typified by Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend, fails t o provide a suitable alternative, and to suggest that the radical approaches of recent writers such as Mary Hesse and Dudley Shapere hold out a genuine promise of dealing effectively with the central tasks that face the philosopher of science today. (shrink)

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In this paper, I take a closer look at Hans Reichenbach’s relation to metaphysics and work out some interesting parallels between his account and that of the proponents of inductive metaphysics, a tradition that emerged in the mid- and late 19th century and the early 20th century in Germany. It is in particular Hans Reichenbach’s conception of the relation between the natural sciences and metaphysics, as displayed in his treatment of the question of the existence of the external world, that (...) shows some very interesting similarities with inductive metaphysics. By a comparison with the position of the inductive metaphysician Erich Becher and his handling of the problem of realism, I work out the parallels between Reichenbach’s program and inductive metaphysics. I come to the conclusion that while there are certainly some respects in which Reichenbach’slogicalempiricism is closer to the positions of the representatives of the Vienna Circle, it turns out that with regard to his views on metaphysics there is a greater affinity with the program of inductive metaphysics. (shrink)

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