Abstract

Schlick has been accused of a number of philosophical sins over the years, most notably his rather casual, and frequent, traversing of the borders between language, experience, and reality. While we allow our scientists the freedom to roam creatively throughout the peripheral regions of Epistemology and Metaphysics, we are not so tolerant of our philosophers. We know that Schlick gave up the physics laboratory for the philosopher’s armchair, and we expect him to stick to a particular position.Schlick’s colleagues in the Vienna Circle were not totally blameless in this regard, either, and it may be that part of the charm of their work is precisely their inability to stick to the positions that solidified over 2500 years of western philosophy.