This book grew out of an international symposium, organized in September 1986 by the Austrian Cultural Institute in Warsaw in cooperation with the Polish Philosophical Society. The topic was: The Vienna Circle and the Lvov-Warsaw School. Since the two phil osophical trends existed in roughly the same time and were close ly related, it was one of the purposes of the symposium to investigate both similarities and thp differences. Some thirty people took part in the symposium, nearly twenty (...) contributions were presented and extensively discussed. The sym posium owed much to the excellent organization and warm hospital ity shown by Dr Georg Jankovic, the Director of the Austrian In stitute. As the person in charge of the scientific programme of the symposium, I take pleasure to acknowledge this debt. It so happened that a month later another symposium of a similar character was held. It took place in the University of Manchester, on the occasion of the centenary of the births of Stanislaw Lesniewski, Tadeusz Kotarbiflski and Wladyslaw Tatarkie wicz. Some papers read at the Manchester symposium form a part of the present volume. It was not possible, for technical reasons (the time factor was one of them), to include in this book all the material from the two symposia. Certain contributions have appeared elsewhere (for instance, K. Szaniawski's 'Ajdukiewicz on Non-Deductive Inference' was published in Danish Yearbook of Philosophy, Vol. 23). On the other hand, certain papers have been written special ly for this volume. (shrink)

Friedrich Nietzsche was among the figures from the history of nineteenth century philosophy that, perhaps surprisingly, some of the Vienna Circle’s members had presented as one of their predecessors. While, primarily for political reasons, most Anglophone figures in the history of analytic philosophy had taken a dim view of Nietzsche, the Vienna Circle’s leader Moritz Schlick admired and praised Nietzsche, rejecting what he saw as a misinterpretation of Nietzsche as a militarist or proto-fascist. Schlick, Frank, Neurath, (...) and Carnap were in different ways committed to the view that Nietzsche made a significant contribution to the overcoming of metaphysics. Some of these philosophers praised the intimate connection Nietzsche drew between his philosophical outlook and empirical studies in psychology and physiology. In his 1912 lectures on Nietzsche, Schlick maintained that Nietzsche overcame an initial Schopenhauerian metaphysical-artistic phase in his thinking, and subsequently remained a positivist until his last writings. Frank and Neurath made the weaker claim that Nietzsche contributed to the development of a positivistic or scientific conception of the world. Schlick and Frank took a further step in seeing the mature Nietzsche as an Enlightenment thinker. (shrink)

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to sit in on a meeting of the Vienna Circle, listening to discussions by the greatest Austrian thinkers of the 20th century, including Moritz Schlick, Gustav Bergmann, and Karl Menger? Join original Vienna-Circle member Victor Kraft in his discussion of the movement for an exclusive insider s view of this important point in philosophical history. In this in-depth philosophical study, Victor Kraft explores the role the Vienna (...) Circle had on the international philosophical movement. The Vienna Circle constituted a point of departure for the reawaking, rebirth, and reformation of positivism and empiricism, leading to the creation of the Neo-positivism movement. At the time of publication in the 1950s, the Neo-positivism movement stood in the foreground of contemporary philosophy, and it was quite possibly the most significant serious philosophical movement in the period between the two world wars. Making Kraft s study of Neo-positivism available to a world audience, Arthur Pap provides a rich and accessible translation from the original German. Victor Kraft was an Austrian philosopher and a founding member of the Vienna Circle. He taught theoretical philosophy at the University of Vienna. During World War II, he lost his teaching post because of his wife s Jewish background, but he went back to teaching in 1945. He was known for his scientific approach to philosophy, especially his application of empiricism to his ideas on logical positivism. He continued to teach at the university and write on logic, ethics, and the philosophy of history until his death in 1975. (shrink)

Uebel has recently claimed that, contrary to popular opinion, none of the philosophers of the Vienna Circle of Logical Positivists were proponents of epistemological foundationalism. According to the considerations of the current discussion, however, Uebel's conclusion is erroneous, especially with respect to the work of Moritz Schlick. The chief reason Uebel offers to support his conclusion is that current attempts to portray Schlick's epistemology as foundationalist fail to overcome its ‘ultimate incoherence’. In contrast, it is argued that current (...) interpretations, based on the unpublished as well as the published record, provide understandings of Schlick's foundationalist epistemology as not only coherent, but plausible. In closing, Uebel's own treatment of Schlick's work, which purports to show that the most feasible candidates for foundational statements are ‘meaning-theoretic’ clarifications of the content of expressions, itself fails to accurately represent Schlick's own characterizations, and pictures Schlick's epistemology as a confused mix of epistemic and semantic insights. (shrink)

This article is intended as a contribution to the current debates about the relationship between politics and the philosophy of science in the Vienna Circle. I reconsider this issue by shifting the focus from philosophy of science as theory to philosophy of science as practice. From this perspective I take as a starting point the Vienna Circle’s scientific world-conception and emphasize its practical nature: I reinterpret its tenets as a set of recommendations that express the particular (...) epistemological attitude in which both the Vienna Circle’s (doing) philosophy of science and its political engagement were rooted. -/- Regarding politics, and referring to new primary sources, I reconstruct how the scientific world-conception placed the Vienna Circle within a neoliberal-socialist political network that pursued concrete political aims. In light of my reconstruction I shall argue that neither the Vienna Circle’s alleged ethical noncognitivism nor its alleged adhesion to the Weberian ideal of a value-free science rules out the possibility of ascribing to the Vienna Circle a politically engaged philosophy of science: the case of the Vienna Circle shows how philosophy of science, as a public activity, can itself become a form of political engagement, even without necessarily entailing a theory of objective values. (shrink)

The history of early analytic philosophy, and especially the work of the logical empiricists, has often been seen as involving antagonisms with rival schools. Though recent scholarship has interrogated the Vienna Circle’s relations with e.g. phenomenology and Neo-Kantianism, important works by some of its leading members are involved in responding to the rising tide of Lebensphilosophie. This paper will explore Carnap’s configuration of the relation between Lebensphilosophie and the overcoming of metaphysics, Schlick’s responses to Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, and (...) Neurath’s reaction against Spengler. (shrink)

Stuart, SN An extraordinary concentration of intellectual effort in Vienna during 1924 to 1936 produced a new standard of philosophy which remains an important touchstone today, despite some shortcomings which have become apparent. The contributors were animated to regain clarity of collective thought, felt to be lost in the convulsion of the Great War. As its topics were quickly taken up in Prague and Berlin, Cambridge and Harvard, the Vienna Circle came to exert an important, international influence (...) on the intellectual and scientific history of the twentieth century. In particular, its program for separating knowledge from nonsense informed the emerging international Humanist movement. (shrink)

The Uppsala School in philosophy and the Vienna Circle are prima facie similar currents in contemporary philosophy. Both reject metaphysics, claim that reality is a spatio­‑temporal realm and adhere to noncognitivism in terms of values. However, justifications of these assumptions are quite different. In the following article we reconstruct main theses of both mentioned currents and then we indicate their impact on one of the major jurisprudential movements, namely Scandinavian Legal Realism. We focus on Alf Ross’ legal philosophy, (...) as it was an attempt to accommodate both: the philosophy of the Uppsala School and of the Vienna Circle. We trace those two sources of inspiration in Ross’ theory of legal validity and of legal concepts. (shrink)

The Vienna Circle was an influential group of philosophers in the early 20th century. Its members were dedicated to do philosophy and to conduct research in accordance with the guidelines of the scientific world-conception. For some of them, Oswald Spengler was a dangerous antagonist due to the success and influence of his metaphysical philosophy of history in Der Untergang des Abendlandes and other works. In this paper, I will explore systematically the Circle’s critical reception of Spengler regarding (...) his methodological approaches, ontological positions, and political philosophy. I will, thereby, also evaluate the criticism brought forth against Spengler. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

From the author of Wittgenstein's Poker and Would You Kill the Fat Man?, the story of an extraordinary group of philosophers during a dark chapter in Europe's history On June 22, 1936, the philosopher Moritz Schlick was on his way to deliver a lecture at the University of Vienna when Johann Nelböck, a deranged former student of Schlick's, shot him dead on the university steps. Some Austrian newspapers defended the madman, while Nelböck himself argued in court that his onetime (...) teacher had promoted a treacherous Jewish philosophy. David Edmonds traces the rise and fall of the Vienna Circle—an influential group of brilliant thinkers led by Schlick—and of a philosophical movement that sought to do away with metaphysics and pseudoscience in a city darkened by fascism, anti-Semitism, and unreason. The Vienna Circle's members included Otto Neurath, Rudolf Carnap, and the eccentric logician Kurt Gödel. On its fringes were two other philosophical titans of the twentieth century, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper. The Circle championed the philosophy of logical empiricism, which held that only two types of propositions have cognitive meaning, those that can be verified through experience and those that are analytically true. For a time, it was the most fashionable movement in philosophy. Yet by the outbreak of World War II, Schlick's group had disbanded and almost all its members had fled. Edmonds reveals why the Austro-fascists and the Nazis saw their philosophy as such a threat. The Murder of Professor Schlick paints an unforgettable portrait of the Vienna Circle and its members while weaving an enthralling narrative set against the backdrop of economic catastrophe and rising extremism in Hitler's Europe. (shrink)

This work is for scholars, researchers and students in history and philosophy of science focusing on Logical Empiricism and analytic philosophy (of science). It provides historical and systematic research and deals with the influence and impact of the Vienna Circle/Logical Empiricism on today's philosophy of science. It also explores the intellectual context of this scientific philosophy and focuses on main figures and peripheral adherents.

Members of Vienna Circle explicated determinism in terms of predictability in principle, or calculability. This paper attempts to uncover the rationale for this explication. It argues that the explication was an attempt to escape trivialization arguments; another important factor was the Circle’s views on meaning as testability.

One of the key events in the relations between the Central European philosophers and those of the Nordic countries was the Second International Congress for the ...

Tscha Hung was a member of the Vienna Circle who achieved high international academic recognition. He dedicated his entire life to spreading the philosophy of the Circle to China and developed deep insights in his criticisms to that philosophy. Hung was a witness to the encounter of Western and Chinese philosophy in the twentieth century. His debate with Fung You-lan on metaphysics reflects different understandings of the nature of philosophy and metaphysics as well as different perspectives. Hung (...) defended the position of metaphysics in Chinese philosophy in his own way and engaged in a contemporary reconstruction of Chinese philosophy. (shrink)

The proposed text develops a number of provisions of N.I. Kuznetsova’s article “Oxymoron of the Vienna Circle”. Special attention is paid to the intellectual heritage of the Vienna Circle, which is in many ways paradoxical – rejected and simultaneously operational.

The tendency to attribute foundationalist ambitions to the Vienna Circle has long obscured our view of its attempted revolution in philosophy. The present paper makes the case for a consistently epistemologically anti-foundationalist interpretation of all three of the Circle's main protagonists: Schlick, Carnap, and Neurath. Corresponding to the intellectual fault lines within the Circle, two ways of going about the radical reorientation of the pursuit of philosophy will then be distinguished and the contemporary potential of Carnap's (...) and Neurath's project explored. (shrink)

The theory of quantum mechanics has often been thought to show an affinity with logical empiricism: in both, observation plays a central role, and questions about what is unobservable are dismissed. However, there were also strong tensions between the logical empiricism of the Vienna Circle and implications drawn from quantum physics. In the 1920s and 1930s, many physicists thought that quantum mechanics revealed a limit to what could be known scientifically, and this opened the door to a wide (...) range of speculations, in which quantum mechanics was connected with free will, organic life, psychology, and religion—speculations in which many leading quantum physicists were engaged. Members of the Vienna Circle, such as Frank and Schlick, looked at quantum mechanics for a confirmation of their empiricist views, but they were at the same time critical about these wider implications drawn from quantum mechanics, which in their eyes were connected with broader mystical and irrational trends in society. They engaged in particular with the views of Bohr and Jordan, both of whom expressed a sympathy for logical empiricism while at the same time arguing for claims that proved hard to reconcile with the scientific world conception of the Vienna Circle. (shrink)

Recent scholarship resuscitates the history and philosophy of a ‘left wing’ in the Vienna Circle, offering a counterhistory to the conventional image of analytic philosophy as politically conformist. This paper disputes the historical claim that early logical empiricists developed a political philosophy of science. Though some individuals in the Vienna Circle, including Rudolf Carnap and Otto Neurath, believed strongly in the importance of science to social progress, they did not construct a political philosophy of science. Both (...) Carnap and Neurath were committed to forms of political neutralism that run strongly against a political reading of their logical empiricism. In addition, Carnap and Neurath sharply differ on precisely the subject of the place of politics in logical empiricism, throwing into question the construct of the ‘Left Vienna Circle’ as a coherent, sociohistorical, programmatic unit within the Vienna Circle.Keywords: Vienna Circle; Rudolf Carnap; Otto Neurath; Logical empiricism; History of philosophy of science; Political philosophy of science. (shrink)

The article examines the main ideological content of the work of the community of scientists and philosophers, which entered the history of philosophy under the name “The Vienna Circle”. Representatives of this association viewed their main methodological task in the logical analysis of the language of science in order to eliminate metaphysical – pseudoscientific – concepts. They investigated the structure of scientific theories, the functions of the theory – explanation and prediction, the processes of justification, confirmation and refutation (...) of theories. Their results were widely recognized, set down essential influence on scientific problems as well as style of philosophical and academic studies, and are still included in textbooks on the philosophy of science. The members of the Vienna Circle created the first holistic concept of science, which gave impetus to subsequent developments in the philosophy of science and served as example for the construction of similar concepts. The socio-ideological prerequisite of this philosophical movement was the task of creating a new scientific view of the world, opposing philosophical pessimism and anti-scientism. This worldview, however, was not naive-scientististic, but presented a synthetic project at the intersection of natural science, philosophy, art and social pedagogy. (shrink)

A new direction in philosophy Between 1920 and 1940 logical empiricism 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, the logical 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 of logical empiricism 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 rejected logical empiricism 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 study logical empiricism as an important movement. Unlike their predecessors in the 1960s-for whom the debate over logical empiricism now seems to have been largely motivated by professional politics-these philosopher no longer have to take positions for or against logical empiricism. 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 the logical 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. Available individually by volume. 1. The Emergence of Logical Empiricism (0-8153-2262-3) 432 pages 2. Logical Empiricism at its Peak (0-8153-2263-1) 4243 pages 3. Logic, Probability, and Epistemology (0-8153-2264-X) 424 pages 4. Logical Empiricism and the Special Sciences (0-8153-2265-8) 376 pages 5. Decline and Obsolescence of Logical Empiricsm (0-8153-2266-6) 440 pages 6. The Legacy of the Vienna Circle (0-8153-2267-4) 400 pages. (shrink)

I argue that Wittgenstein’s short-lived verificationism (c.1929-30) differed from that of his contacts in the Vienna Circle in not being a reductionist view. It lay the groundwork for his later views that the meaning of a word is determined by its use and that certain "propositions of the form of empirical propositions" (On Certainty, §§96, 401, 402) act as "norm[s] of description" (On Certainty,§§167, 321). He gave it up once he realized that it contradicted his rejection of logical (...) atomism, and that he ever held such a view at all says something about his respect for the leader of the Vienna Circle, Moritz Schlick. (shrink)

The "standard account" of Wittgenstein’s relations with the Vienna Circle is that the early Wittgenstein was a principal source and inspiration for the Circle’s positivistic and scientific philosophy, while the later Wittgenstein was deeply opposed to the logical empiricist project of articulating a "scientific conception of the world." However, this telegraphic summary is at best only half-true and at worst deeply misleading. For it prevents us appreciating the fluidity and protean character of their philosophical dialogue. In retrospectively (...) attributing clear-cut positions to Wittgenstein and his interlocutors, it is very easy to read back our current understanding of familiar distinctions into a time when those terms were used in a much more open-ended way. The paper aims to to provide a broader perspective on this debate, starting from the protagonists’ understanding of their respective positions. Too often, the programmatic statements about the nature of their work that are repeated in manifestoes, introductions, and elementary textbooks have occupied center stage in the subsequent secondary literature. Consequently, I focus on a detailed examination of a turning point in their relationship. That turning point is Wittgenstein's charge, in the summer of 1932, that a recently published paper of Carnap's, "Physicalistic Language as the Universal Language of Science", made such extensive and unacknowledged use of Wittgenstein's own ideas that Wittgenstein would, as he put it in a letter to Schlick, "soon be in a situation where my own work shall be considered merely as a reheated version or plagiarism of Carnap’s." While the leading parties in this dispute shared a basic commitment to the primacy of physicalistic language, and the view that all significant languages are translatable, there was a remarkable lack of mutual understanding between them, and deep disagreement about the nature of the doctrines they disputed. Three quarters of a century later, we are so much more conscious of the differences that separated them than the points on which they agreed that it takes an effort of historical reconstruction to appreciate why Wittgenstein once feared that his own work would be regarded as a pale shadow of Carnap’s. (shrink)

Frank Ramsey (1903-1930) is usually taken to be sympathetic to the Vienna Circle’s project. I will argue that this is not right. Ramsey was a pragmatist, and he put pragmatist objections to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, objections which also had the Vienna Circle as their target. Ramsey thought the Circle’s position (like Wittgenstein’s) was mistaken in that, instead of starting with human inquiry, it tried to construct the world out of elementary particulars and logic, and resulted in (...) an unacceptable solipsism. This paper traces the trajectory of Ramsey’s pragmatist thought, and its relationship to the early Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the claim that the Left Vienna Circle offers a theoretical and historical precedent for a politically engaged philosophy of science today. I describe the model for a political philosophy of science advanced by LVC historians. They offer this model as a moderate, properly philosophical approach to political philosophy of science that is rooted in the analytic tradition. This disciplinary-historical framing leads to weaknesses in LVC scholars’ conception of the history of the LVC and its contemporary (...) relevance. In this light, I examine the claim that there are productive enrichments to be gained from the engagement of feminist philosophy of science with the LVC, finding this claim ill-formulated. The case of LVC historiography and feminist philosophy of science presents a revealing study in the uses and ethics of disciplinary history, showing how feminist and other perspectives are misconceived and marginalized by forms of disciplinary self-narrativizing.Keywords: Vienna Circle; Logical empiricism; Political philosophy of science; Disciplinary history; Feminist philosophy of science. (shrink)

In 1980, Pierre Jacob1 published a book about the itinerary of logical positivism from Vienna to Cambridge , a story of the migration and of the effects of logical positivism in America since the fifties. Christiane Chauviré 2 took the other way round in a paper about the early influence of Peirce’s pragmatism on the Vienna Circle . We are also aware of the importance of logical positivism in England. Sir Alfred Ayer brought it back to England (...) after having met, on Ryle’s recommendation, Moritz Schlick in Vienna in 1932. Gilbert Ryle was Ayer’s tutor in Oxford. The meeting between the two of them took place two years after the International Congress of Philosophy in Oxford . It was on this occasion that Gilbert Ryle, who opened the congress, met Schlick for the first time. In his autobiographical sketch,3 he mentions the impact of the Viennese philosophy on his own philosophical development in the early thirties. This attests to the Vienna/Cambridge /Oxford triangle. (shrink)

The history of the Vienna Circle is bound up with what was called the Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung. But with the requirements of the members when it came to deciding whether a sentence expressed scientific knowledge or not, the basic sentences expressing a Lebens- und Weltauffassung would scarcely qualify as such, nor would hypotheses about a scientific world view. The Wissenschaftlichkeit ofphysicalism, logical behaviorism,logical syntax, unity of science, were hypothetical at best, and in my opinion should not be identified with (...) the total philosophical enterprise of the Vienna Circle. To its strictly speaking philosophical enterprise I attribute a certain kind of scientific or research attitude and clarity as much as any set of philosophical opinion of a substantial sort. (shrink)

In the judgment of many historians of contemporary philosophy as well as of analytic philosophers of different lines, there is no doubt about the truth of the statement that the philosophy of the Vienna Circle is dead. And since it is dead, some think that the only remaining task could be to find out the cause that led to the downfall of this proud philosophical movement.

The Vienna Circle as part of the intellectual movement of Central European philosophy of science is certainly one of the most important currents for the emergence of modern philosophy of science. Independent from this uncontested historical fact there remains the question of the direct and indirect infl uence, reception and topicality of this scientifi c community in contemporary general philosophy of science as well as in the philosophy of the individual sciences, including the social sciences and humanities.

This book offers a critical update of current Wittgenstein research on the Tractatus logico-philosophicus (TLP) and its relation to the Vienna Circle. The contributions are written by renowned Wittgenstein scholars, on the occasion of the "Wittgenstein Years" 1921/1922 with a special focus on its origin, reception, and interpretation then and now. The main topic is the mutual relation between Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle (esp. Schlick, Waismann, Carnap, Gödel), but also Russell and Ramsey. In addition, included (...) in this volume are new studies on Wittgenstein's life and work, on the philosophy of the TLP, and on the Wittgenstein family in philosophical and historical context. Furthermore, unpublished documents on Wittgenstein and Waismann from the archives are provided in form of edited and commented primary sources. As per the book series' usual format, a general part of this Yearbook covers a study on Neurath's economy as well as reviews of related publications. (shrink)

On March 12, 1938 the German army crossed the border into Austria. By the following September Gustav Bergmann had managed to send his first wife, Anna, and his daughter, Hanna, to safety in England. In October he managed to leave Austria himself. He first went to the Hague in the Netherlands to see Otto Neurath, who gave him enough money to assist his passage to New York. Bergmann’s prospects were quite uncertain at that time and it was not clear that (...) he would ever be able to repay Neurath. Neurath told Bergmann not to worry about repayment; he merely requested that Bergmann writes something about his recollections of the Vienna Circle. Bergmann wrote the following letter on the S. S. Staatendam while enroute to New York City to begin his new life. (shrink)

Logical positivism had an important impact on the Danish intellectual climate before World War Two. During the thirties close relations were established between members of the Vienna Circle and philosophers and scientists in Copenhagen. This influence not only affected Danish philosophy and science; it also impinged on the cultural avant-garde and via them on the public debate concerning social and political reforms. Hand in hand with the positivistic ideas you find functionalism emerging as a new heretical language in (...) art, architecture, and design. Not surprisingly, you may say, since the logical positivists’ wishes of stripping philosophy of metaphysics is spiritually similar to the functionalists’ desire to get rid of symbols and ornaments. One event more than anything confirmed the connection between the Vienna Circle, Denmark, and the rest of the Nordic countries. For a short while Copenhagen became the centre for the Circle’s activities when in 1936 the 2nd Inter national Congress for the Unity of Science was held there between June 21 and 26. A photograph, taken during the conference, shows many of the participants sitting in the hall of Carlsberg’s honorary mansion where Niels Bohr was living at the time. Among the audience you find Otto Neurath , Carl Gustav Hempel and Karl Popper , but also some of the more prominent Danish scientists and scholars whose world views were congenial with the logical positivists. (shrink)

Discussions of the relation between pragmatism and logical empiricism tend to focus on the period when the logical empiricists found themselves in exile, mostly in the United States, and then attempt to gauge the actual extent of their convergence. My concern lies with the period before that and the question whether pragmatism had an earlier influence on the development of logical empiricism, especially on the thought of the former members of the “first” Vienna Circle. I argue for a (...) substantially qualified affirmative answer. (shrink)