Logical positivism grew from the discussions of Moritz Schlick's Vienna Circle and Hans Reichenbach's Berlin Circle in the 1920s and 1930s. The movement is known for its espousal of verificationism, its admiration for science and technical rigor, and its commitment to the analytic-synthetic distinction. The logical positivists agreed that there are no synthetic a priori propositions, though they disagreed with earlier positivists, such as Ernst Mach, who held that the a priori had no place in science. Moritz Schlick around 1930 Moritz Schlick ( )(April 14, 1882–June 22, 1936) was a German philosopher and the founding father of logical positivism and the Vienna Circle. ... Moritz Schlick around 1930 The Vienna Circle (in German: der Wiener Kreis) was a group of philosophers who gathered around Moritz Schlick when he was called to the Vienna University in 1922, organized in a philosophical association named Verein Ernst Mach (Ernst Mach Society). ... Hans Reichenbach (September 26, 1891, Hamburg, – April 9, 1953, Los Angeles) was a leading philosopher of science, educator and proponent of logical positivism. ... The Berlin Circle was a group that maintained logical positivist views about philosophy. ... In philosophy, epistemic theories of truth are attempts to analyse the notion of truth in terms of epistemic notions such as belief, acceptance, verification, justification, perspective and so on. ... The analytic-synthetic distinction is a semantic distinction, used primarily in philosophy to distinguish propositions into two types: analytic propositions and synthetic propositions. ... The terms a priori and a posteriori are used in philosophy to distinguish between two different types of propositional knowledge. ... Ernst Mach Ernst Mach (February 18, 1838 – February 19, 1916) was an Austrian-Czech physicist and philosopher and is the namesake for the Mach number and the optical illusion known as Mach bands. ...

Origins

The chief influences on the early logical positivists were the positivist Ernst Mach and logician Gottlob Frege. // Positivism is a philosophy developed by Auguste Comte (widely regarded as the first true sociologist) in the middle of the 19th century that stated that the only authentic knowledge is scientific knowledge, and that such knowledge can only come from positive affirmation of theories through strict scientific method. ... Ernst Mach Ernst Mach (February 18, 1838 – February 19, 1916) was an Austrian-Czech physicist and philosopher and is the namesake for the Mach number and the optical illusion known as Mach bands. ... Logic, from Classical Greek λόγος logos (meaning word, account, reason or principle), is the study of the principles and criteria of valid inference and demonstration. ... Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege (8 November 1848, Wismar – 26 July 1925, IPA: ) was a German mathematician who became a logician and philosopher. ...

Mach's influence is most apparent in the logical positivists' persistent concern with metaphysics, the unity of science, and the interpretation of the theoretical terms of science, as well as the doctrines of reductionism and phenomenalism, later abandoned by many positivists. Plato (Left) and Aristotle (right), by Raphael (Stanza della Segnatura, Rome) Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the ultimate nature of reality, being, and the world. ... Descartes held that non-human animals could be reductively explained as automata — De homines 1622. ... In epistemology and the philosophy of perception, phenomenalism is the view that physical objects do not exist as things in themselves but only as perceptual phenomena or sensory stimuli (e. ...

Wittgenstein's Tractatus was a text of great importance for the positivists. The use of the tools of modern logic for linguistic reform, the conception of philosophy as a "critique of language," and the possibility of drawing a theoretically principled distinction between intelligible and nonsensical discourse were all appealing to the logical positivists. Many positivists adopted a correspondence theory of truth similar to that of the Tractatus, although some, like Otto Neurath, preferred a form of coherentism. Wittgenstein's influence is further evident in certain formulations of the verification principle. Compare, for example, Proposition 4.024 of the Tractatus, where Wittgenstein asserts that we understand a proposition when we know what happens if it is true, with Schlick's assertion that "To state the circumstances under which a proposition is true is the same as stating its meaning".^[1] The tractarian doctrine that the truths of logic are tautologies was widely held among the logical positivists. Wittgenstein also influenced the logical positivists' interpretation of probability. It should be noted that not all logical positivists' reactions to the Tractatus were positive; according to Neurath, it was full of metaphysics.^[2] Book cover of the Dover edition of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Ogden translation) Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is the only book-length work published by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein in his lifetime. ... The correspondence theory of truth states that something (for example, a proposition or statement or sentence) is rendered true by the existence of a fact with corresponding elements and a similar structure. ... Otto Neurath (December 10, 1882-December 22, 1945) was an Austrian sociologist, political economist, and an unorthodox Marxist. ... There are two distinct types of Coherentism. ... In the early twentieth century, the logical positivists put forth what came to be known as the verifiability theory of meaning. ... Probability is the chance that something is likely to happen or be the case. ...

Contemporary developments in logic and the foundations of mathematics, especially Russell and Whitehead's monumental Principia Mathematica, impressed the more mathematically minded logical positivists such as Hans Hahn and Rudolf Carnap. "Language-planning" and syntactical techniques derived from these developments were used to defend logicism in the philosophy of mathematics and various reductionist theses. Russell's theory of types was employed to explosive effect in Carnap's early anti-metaphysical polemics.^[3] The Principia Mathematica is a three-volume work on the foundations of mathematics, written by Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell and published in 1910-1913. ... Hans Hahn (1879 - 1934) was an Austrian mathematician who made many contributions to functional analysis, topology, set theory, the calculus of variations, real analysis, and order theory. ... Rudolf Carnap (May 18, 1891, Ronsdorf, Germany – September 14, 1970, Santa Monica, California) was an influential philosopher who was active in central Europe before 1935 and in the United States thereafter. ... Logicism is one of the schools of thought in the philosophy of mathematics, putting forth the theory that mathematics is an extension of logic and therefore some or all mathematics is reducible to logic. ... At the broadest level, type theory is the branch of mathematics and logic that first creates a hierarchy of types, then assigns each mathematical (and possibly other) entity to a type. ...

Immanuel Kant was something of a punching bag in many of the logical positivists' early debates, but his influence shows through. His doctrine of synthetic a priori truths was the view to overthrow, and his notion of the thing in itself commanded its fair share of attention. More positively, Kantian views about the nature of physical objects pervade the "protocol sentence" debate^[4], and the positivists all shared somewhat Kantian views about the relationship between philosophy and science.^[5] “Kant” redirects here. ...

Basic tenets

Although the logical positivists held a wide range of beliefs on many matters, they were all interested in science and skeptical of theology and metaphysics. Early on, most logical positivists believed that all knowledge is based on logical inference from simple "protocol sentences" grounded in observable facts. Many logical positivists supported forms of materialism, philosophical naturalism, and empiricism. At Wikiversity you can learn more and teach others about Theology at: The School of Theology Theology finds its scholars pursuing the understanding of and providing reasoned discourse of religion, spirituality and God or the gods. ... Plato (Left) and Aristotle (right), by Raphael (Stanza della Segnatura, Rome) Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the ultimate nature of reality, being, and the world. ... In philosophy, materialism is that form of physicalism which holds that the only thing that can truly be said to exist is matter; that fundamentally, all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. ... Naturalism is any of several philosophical stances, typically those descended from materialism and pragmatism, that reject the validity of explanations or theories making use of entities inaccessible to natural science. ... In philosophy generally, empiricism is a theory of knowledge emphasizing the role of experience in the formation of ideas, while discounting the notion of innate ideas. ...

Perhaps the view for which the logical positivists are best known is the verifiability criterion of meaning, or verificationism. In one of its earlier and stronger formulations, this is the doctrine that a proposition is "cognitively meaningful" only if there is a finite procedure for conclusively determining whether it is true or false.^[6] An intended consequence of this view, for most logical positivists, is that metaphysical, theological, and ethical statements fall short of this criterion, and so are not cognitively meaningful.^[7] They distinguished cognitive from other varieties of meaningfulness (e.g. emotive, expressive, figurative), and most authors concede that the non-cognitive statements of the history of philosophy possess some other kind of meaningfulness. The positive characterization of cognitive meaningfulness varies from author to author. It has been described as the property of having a truth value, corresponding to a possible state of affairs, naming a proposition, or being intelligible or understandable in the sense in which scientific statements are intelligible or understandable.^[8] Note: This short article describes the specific history and ideas of the early verificationists. ...

Another characteristic feature of logical positivism is the commitment to "Unified Science"; that is, the development of a common language or, in Neurath's phrase, a "universal slang" in which all scientific propositions can be expressed.^[9] The adequacy of proposals or fragments of proposals for such a language was often asserted on the basis of various "reductions" or "explications" of the terms of one special science to the terms of another, putatively more fundamental one. Sometimes these reductions took the form of set-theoretic manipulations of a handful of logically primitive concepts;^[10] sometimes these reductions took the form of allegedly analytic or a priori deductive relationships.^[11]. A number of publications over a period of thirty years would attempt to elucidate this concept. The Unified Science is an integral system of knowledge developed by Edward Haskell, Harold Cassidy, Willard V. Quine, Arthur Jensen, and Jere Clark. ... The special sciences are those sciences other than physics that are sometimes thought to be reducible to physics, or to stand in some similar relation of dependence to physics as the fundamental science. ...

Einheitswissenschaft

The Vienna Circle published a collection called Einheitswissenschaft (Unified Science)—edited by Rudolf Carnap, Philipp Frank, Hans Hahn, Otto Neurath, Jorgen Jorgensen (after Hahn's death) and Charles Morris—the aim of which was to present a unified vision of science. The collection was halted, after the publication of several monographies, because of problems arising from World War II. The list of philosophers and scientists who contributed to these works is impressive. The complete list of contributors is given here for the historical record. Rudolf Carnap (May 18, 1891, Ronsdorf, Germany – September 14, 1970, Santa Monica, California) was an influential philosopher who was active in central Europe before 1935 and in the United States thereafter. ... Philipp Frank was an influential philosopher during the first half of the 20th century. ... Hans Hahn (1879 - 1934) was an Austrian mathematician who made many contributions to functional analysis, topology, set theory, the calculus of variations, real analysis, and order theory. ... Otto Neurath (December 10, 1882-December 22, 1945) was an Austrian sociologist, political economist, and an unorthodox Marxist. ... Charles Morris may refer to: Charles Morris (naval officer) (1784 - 1856) Charles Morris (boxer) Olympic medallist 1908 Charles Morris (photographer) Charles Morris (politician) former MP for Manchester, Openshaw Charles W. Morris (1901-1979) semioticist This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise... The Unified Science is an integral system of knowledge developed by Edward Haskell, Harold Cassidy, Willard V. Quine, Arthur Jensen, and Jere Clark. ... Look up monograph in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Combatants Allied powers: China France Great Britain Soviet Union United States and others Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Chiang Kai-shek Charles de Gaulle Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tōjō Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000...

Einheitswissenschaft (Unified Science), edited by Carnap, Frank, Hahn, Neurath, Jorgensen (after Hahn's death), and Morris (from 1938):

• Hans Hahn, Logik, Mathematik und Naturerkennen, 1933
• Otto Neurath, Einheitswissenschaft und Psychologie, 1933
• Rudolf Carnap, Die Aufgabe der Wissenschaftlogik, 1934
• Philipp Frank, Das Ende der mechanistischen Physik, 1935
• Otto Neurath, Was bedeutet rationale Wirtschaftsbetrachtung, 1935
• Otto Neurath, E. Brunswik, C. Hull, G. Mannoury, J. Woodger, Zur Enzyklopädie der Einheitswissenschaft. Vorträge, 1938
• Richard von Mises, Ernst Mach und die empiristische Wissenschaftauffassung, 1939

These works are translated in Unified Science: The Vienna Circle Monograph Series, originally edited by Otto Neurath:, Kluwer, 1987. Hans Hahn (1879 - 1934) was an Austrian mathematician who made many contributions to functional analysis, topology, set theory, the calculus of variations, real analysis, and order theory. ... Otto Neurath (December 10, 1882-December 22, 1945) was an Austrian sociologist, political economist, and an unorthodox Marxist. ... Rudolf Carnap (May 18, 1891, Ronsdorf, Germany – September 14, 1970, Santa Monica, California) was an influential philosopher who was active in central Europe before 1935 and in the United States thereafter. ... Philipp Frank was an influential philosopher during the first half of the 20th century. ... Otto Neurath (December 10, 1882-December 22, 1945) was an Austrian sociologist, political economist, and an unorthodox Marxist. ... Otto Neurath (December 10, 1882-December 22, 1945) was an Austrian sociologist, political economist, and an unorthodox Marxist. ... Egon Brunswik From: Hammond, Kenneth R. (1968). ... Richard von Mises. ...

International Encyclopedia of Unified Science

In 1938 the publication of the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science started under the auspice of logical positivists. It was an ambitious project, and never completed. Only the first section, Foundations of the Unity of Sciences, was published; it contained two volumes, for a total of twenty monographs published from 1938 to 1969: The International Encyclopedia of Unified Science (volumes of which are titled Fundamentals of Unified Science or FUS) was produced to address the growing concern throughout the world for the logic, the history, and the sociology of science. ...

• Otto Neurath, Niels Bohr, John Dewey, Bertrand Russell, Rudolf Carnap, Charles Morris, Encyclopedia and unified science, 1938, vol.1 n.1
• Charles Morris, Foundations of the theory of signs, 1938, vol.1 n.2
• Victor Lenzen, Procedures of empirical sciences, 1938, vol.1 n.5
• Rudolf Carnap, Foundations of logic and mathematics, 1939, vol.1 n.3
• Leonard Bloomfield, Linguistic aspects of science, 1939, vol.1 n.4
• Ernest Nagel, Principles of the theory of probability, 1939, vol.1 n.6
• John Dewey, Theory of valuation, 1939, vol.2 n.4
• Giorgio De Santillana and Edgar Zilsel, The development of rationalism and empiricism, 1941, vol.2 n.8
• Otto Neurath, Foundations of social sciences, 1944, vol.2 n.1
• Joseph Henri Woodger, The technique of theory construction, 1949, vol.2 n.5
• Philipp Frank, Foundations of physics, 1946, vol.1 n.7
• Erwin Frinlay-Freundlich, Cosmology, 1951, vol.1 n.8
• Jorgen Jorgensen, The development of logical empiricism, 1951, vol.2 n.9
• Egon Brunswik, The conceptual framework of psychology, 1952, vol.1 n.10
• Carl Hempel, Fundamentals of concept formation in empirical science, 1952, vol.2 n.7
• Felix Mainx, Foundations of biology, 1955, vol.1 n.9
• Abraham Edel, Science and the structure of ethics, 1961, vol.2 n.3
• Thomas Kuhn, The structure of scientific revolutions, 1962, vol.2 n.2
• Gherard Tintner, Methodology of mathematical economics and econometrics, 1968, vol.2 n.6
• Herbert Feigl and Charles Morris, Bibliography and index, 1969, vol.2 n.10

Perhaps the most famous work published in the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science is Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. However, every entry in the encyclopedia is of substantial scientific and philosophical value. Otto Neurath (December 10, 1882-December 22, 1945) was an Austrian sociologist, political economist, and an unorthodox Marxist. ... Niels (Henrik David) Bohr (October 7, 1885 – November 18, 1962) was a Danish physicist who made fundamental contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum mechanics, for which he received the Nobel Prize in 1922. ... John Dewey (October 20, 1859 – June 1, 1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer, whose thoughts and ideas have been greatly influential in the United States and around the world. ... Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970), was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician and advocate for social reform. ... Rudolf Carnap (May 18, 1891, Ronsdorf, Germany – September 14, 1970, Santa Monica, California) was an influential philosopher who was active in central Europe before 1935 and in the United States thereafter. ... Charles Morris may refer to: Charles Morris (naval officer) (1784 - 1856) Charles Morris (boxer) Olympic medallist 1908 Charles Morris (photographer) Charles Morris (politician) former MP for Manchester, Openshaw Charles W. Morris (1901-1979) semioticist This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise... Rudolf Carnap (May 18, 1891, Ronsdorf, Germany – September 14, 1970, Santa Monica, California) was an influential philosopher who was active in central Europe before 1935 and in the United States thereafter. ... Leonard Bloomfield (April 1, 1887 - April 18, 1949) was an American linguist, whose influence dominated the development of structural linguistics in America between the 1930s and the 1950s. ... Ernest Nagel (November 16, 1901, Prague, Austro-Hungarian Empire -- September 22, 1985, New York City) was among the most important philosophers of science of his time. ... John Dewey (October 20, 1859 – June 1, 1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer, whose thoughts and ideas have been greatly influential in the United States and around the world. ... Edgar Zilsel (August 11, 1891 in Vienna – March 11, 1944 in Oakland, United States) was an Austrian historian and philosopher of science. ... Philipp Frank was an influential philosopher during the first half of the 20th century. ... Egon Brunswik From: Hammond, Kenneth R. (1968). ... Carl Gustav Hempel (* January 8th, 1905 in Oranienburg, Germany † November 9th, 1997 in Princeton, New Jersey) was a philosopher of science and a student of logical positivism. ... Thomas Samuel Kuhn (July 18, 1922 – June 17, 1996) was an American intellectual who wrote extensively on the history of science and developed several important notions in the philosophy of science. ... Herbert Feigl (December 14, 1902 - June 1, 1988) was an Austrian philosopher and a member of the Vienna Circle. ... Charles Morris may refer to: Charles Morris (naval officer) (1784 - 1856) Charles Morris (boxer) Olympic medallist 1908 Charles Morris (photographer) Charles Morris (politician) former MP for Manchester, Openshaw Charles W. Morris (1901-1979) semioticist This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise... Thomas Samuel Kuhn (July 18, 1922 – June 17, 1996) was an American intellectual who wrote extensively on the history of science and developed several important notions in the philosophy of science. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...

Monographs on the Scientific World-Conception

A third collection was published by the Vienna Circle from 1928 to 1937. This collection was entitled Schriften zur wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung (Monographs on the Scientific World-Conception), and was edited by Schlick and Frank. Scientists and philosophers such as Karl Popper contributed. The contributors and monographs were: Sir Karl Raimund Popper, CH, FRS, FBA, (July 28, 1902 – September 17, 1994), was an Austrian born naturalized British[1] philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics. ...

• Richard von Mises, Wahrscheinlichkeit, Statistik und Wahrheit, 1928 (Probability, Statistics, and Truth, New York: MacMillan Company, 1939)
• Rudolf Carnap, Abriss der Logistik, 1929
• Moritz Schlick, Fragen der Ethik, 1930 (Problems of Ethics, New York: Prentice-Hall, 1939)
• Otto Neurath, Empirische Soziologie, 1931
• Philipp Frank, Das Kausalgesetz und seine Grenzen, 1932 (The Law of Causality and its Limits, Dordrecht; Boston: Kluwer, 1997)
• Otto Kant, Zur Biologie der Ethik, 1932
• Rudolf Carnap, Logische Syntax der Sprache, 1934 (The Logical Syntax of Language, New York: Humanities, 1937)
• Karl Popper, Logik der Forschung, 1934 (The Logic of Scientific Discovery, New York: Basic Books, 1959)
• Josef Schächeter, Prolegomena zu einer kritischen Grammatik, 1935 (Prolegomena to a Critical Grammar, Dordrecht; Boston: D. Reidel Pub. Co., 1973)
• Victor Kraft, Die Grundlagen einer wissenschaftliche Wertlehre, 1937 (Foundations for a Scientific Analysis of Value, Dordrecht; Boston: D. Reidel Pub. Co., 1981)

Richard von Mises. ... Rudolf Carnap (May 18, 1891, Ronsdorf, Germany – September 14, 1970, Santa Monica, California) was an influential philosopher who was active in central Europe before 1935 and in the United States thereafter. ... Moritz Schlick around 1930 Moritz Schlick ( )(April 14, 1882–June 22, 1936) was a German philosopher and the founding father of logical positivism and the Vienna Circle. ... Otto Neurath (December 10, 1882-December 22, 1945) was an Austrian sociologist, political economist, and an unorthodox Marxist. ... Philipp Frank was an influential philosopher during the first half of the 20th century. ... Sir Karl Raimund Popper, CH, FRS, FBA, (July 28, 1902 – September 17, 1994), was an Austrian born naturalized British[1] philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics. ... Victor Kraft (July 4, 1880 - January 3, 1975) an Austrian philosopher, best known for being a member of the Vienna Circle. ...

Philosophers associated with logical positivism

There is an extensive list of philosophers who are associated to some degree with logical positivism.

The Vienna Circle

• The physicist and philosopher Moritz Schlick, one of the first philosophers interested in the theory of relativity. He taught at the University of Vienna, where he held the chair of theory of inductive science. In Vienna, he organized the discussion group known as the Vienna Circle. Schlick can be considered the father of logical positivism, as he formulated the verifiability principle^[12].
• Rudolf Carnap, one of the major philosophers of the twentieth century, a leading exponent of logical positivism, and co-author of the Vienna Circle manifesto. He made contributions to the philosophy of science, the philosophy of language, the theory of probability, and classical, inductive and modal logic. Since ordinary language is ambiguous, Carnap asserted the necessity to study philosophical issues in artificial languages, governed by the rules of logic and mathematics. In such languages he dealt with problems like the meaning of a statement, the distinction between analytic and synthetic, a priori and a posteriori, necessity and contingency, the different interpretations of probability, and the nature of explanation. Carnap taught at the University of Prague, the University of Vienna, the University of Chicago, Harvard University, and the University of California at Los Angeles.
• The philosopher of science Herbert Feigl, who encouraged Karl Popper to write the book Logik der Forschung. His 1931 article with A. E. Blumberg, "Logical Positivism: A New Movement in European Philosophy" in The Journal of Philosophy, was one of the first reports on logical positivism published in the United States, and promoted the spread of logical positivism. He taught at the University of Iowa and at the University of Minnesota, where in 1953 he founded the Minnesota Center for the Philosophy of Science, the oldest center for the philosophy of science in the world.
• The physicist Philipp Frank, a student of David Hilbert and Ludwig Boltzmann, who was an editor of the series Monographs on the Scientific World-Conception and Unified Science; he contributed to the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science with the 1946 work "Foundations of physics". He taught at Harvard University and wrote about the theory of relativity.
• The logician and mathematician Kurt Gödel attended meetings of the Vienna Circle weekly between 1926 and 1928, but, although he is sometimes mistaken for a positivist, and his greatest achievements "are still often tallied among positivism's greatest success stories"^[13], he was actually committed to Platonism, and many of his core ideas were diametrically opposed to those of the rest of the Circle.^[13] Gödel proved the completeness of first-order logic and the incompleteness of formal arithmetic. Gödel also worked on set theory and non-classical logics, such as intuitionistic logic and modal logic. He proved that the continuum hypothesis is consistent with the axioms of classical set theory. He was interested in the mathematical aspects of the theory of relativity, and proved the existence of solutions of Einstein’s relativistic equations in which time travel to the past is possible.
• The mathematician Hans Hahn, co-author of the Vienna Circle manifesto, who taught at Innsbruck, Bonn and Vienna; among his students there were Karl Popper and Kurt Gödel.
• The philosopher and sociologist Otto Neurath, who played an important role in the development of logical positivism. He was co-author of the manifesto of the Vienna Circle (it is supposed that he was indeed the principal author), planned and directed the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, was an editor of the journal Erkentnnis and of the series Unified Science, and founded and directed the International Foundation for Visual Education.
• The philosopher Friedrich Waismann, who was one of the few members of the Vienna Circle admitted to the meetings with Wittgenstein. He taught philosophy of mathematics and philosophy of science at the University of Cambridge and at the University of Oxford.

Moritz Schlick around 1930 The Vienna Circle (in German: der Wiener Kreis) was a group of philosophers who gathered around Moritz Schlick when he was called to the Vienna University in 1922, organized in a philosophical association named Verein Ernst Mach (Ernst Mach Society). ... Moritz Schlick around 1930 Moritz Schlick ( )(April 14, 1882–June 22, 1936) was a German philosopher and the founding father of logical positivism and the Vienna Circle. ... Two-dimensional analogy of space-time curvature described in General Relativity. ... The University of Vienna (German: Universität Wien) in Vienna, Austria is the oldest university in the current Austro-Hungarian domain; it formally opened in 1365. ... Rudolf Carnap (May 18, 1891, Ronsdorf, Germany – September 14, 1970, Santa Monica, California) was an influential philosopher who was active in central Europe before 1935 and in the United States thereafter. ... Philosophy of science is the study of assumptions, foundations, and implications of science, especially in the natural sciences and social sciences. ... Philosophy of language is the reasoned inquiry into the nature, origins, and usage of language. ... Probability is the chance that something is likely to happen or be the case. ... Logic, from Classical Greek λόγος logos (meaning word, account, reason or principle), is the study of the principles and criteria of valid inference and demonstration. ... Logic, from Classical Greek λόγος logos (meaning word, account, reason or principle), is the study of the principles and criteria of valid inference and demonstration. ... Euclid, Greek mathematician, 3rd century BC, as imagined by by Raphael in this detail from The School of Athens. ... This article is about the word proposition as it is used in logic, philosophy, and linguistics. ... Analytic may refer to Analytic proposition or analytic philosophy, in philosophy Analytic geometry, analytic function, analytic continuation, analytic set in mathematics. ... The terms analytic and synthetic are philosophical terms, used by philosophers to divide propositions into two types: analytic propositions and synthetic propositions. ... The terms a priori and a posteriori are used in philosophy to distinguish between two different types of propositional knowledge. ... A Posteriori is the title of the musical project Enigmas sixth studio album, released in September 2006. ... This article is about the law definition of necessity. ... In philosophy and logic, contingency is the status of facts that are not logically necessary. ... Probability is the chance that something is likely to happen or be the case. ... An explanation is a statement which points to causes, context, and consequences of some object, process, state of affairs, etc. ... The Charles University of Prague (also simply University of Prague; Czech: Univerzita Karlova; Latin: Universitas Carolina) is the oldest and most prestigious Czech university and among the oldest universities in Europe, being founded in 1340s (for the exact year, see below). ... The University of Vienna (German: Universität Wien) in Vienna, Austria is the oldest university in the current Austro-Hungarian domain; it formally opened in 1365. ... The University of Chicago is a private university located principally in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago. ... Harvard University (incorporated as The President and Fellows of Harvard College) is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA and a member of the Ivy League. ... The University of California, Los Angeles, popularly known as UCLA, is a public, coeducational university situated in the neighborhood of Westwood within the city of Los Angeles. ... Herbert Feigl (December 14, 1902 - June 1, 1988) was an Austrian philosopher and a member of the Vienna Circle. ... Sir Karl Raimund Popper, CH, FRS, FBA, (July 28, 1902 – September 17, 1994), was an Austrian born naturalized British[1] philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics. ... The University of Iowa -- or Iowa for short -- is a major national research university located on a 1,900-acre campus in Iowa City, Iowa, USA, on the banks of the Iowa River in East Central Iowa. ... Washington Avenue Bridge at night The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, almost always abbreviated U of M, and sometimes referred to as The U by locals, is the oldest and largest part of the University of Minnesota system. ... Year 1953 (MCMLIII) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Philosophy of science is the study of assumptions, foundations, and implications of science, especially in the natural sciences and social sciences. ... Philipp Frank was an influential philosopher during the first half of the 20th century. ... David Hilbert (January 23, 1862, Königsberg, East Prussia – February 14, 1943, Göttingen, Germany) was a German mathematician, recognized as one of the most influential and universal mathematicians of the 19th and early 20th centuries. ... Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann (Vienna, Austrian Empire, February 20, 1844 – Duino near Trieste, September 5, 1906) was an Austrian physicist famous for his founding contributions in the fields of statistical mechanics and statistical thermodynamics. ... Two-dimensional analogy of space-time curvature described in General Relativity. ... [...]I dont believe in natural science. ... Platonic idealism is the theory that the substantive reality around us is only a reflection of a higher truth. ... First-order logic (FOL) is a universal language in symbolic science, and is in use everyday by mathematicians, philosophers, linguists, computer scientists and practitioners of artificial intelligence. ... In mathematical logic, Gödels incompleteness theorems, proved by Kurt Gödel in 1931, are two theorems stating inherent limitations of all but the most trivial formal systems for arithmetic of mathematical interest. ... Set theory is the mathematical theory of sets, which represent collections of abstract objects. ... Intuitionistic logic, or constructivist logic, is the logic used in mathematical intuitionism and other forms of mathematical constructivism. ... In philosophical logic, a modal logic is any logic for handling modalities: concepts like possibility, impossibility, and necessity. ... In mathematics, the continuum hypothesis is a hypothesis about the possible sizes of infinite sets. ... Two-dimensional analogy of space-time curvature described in General Relativity. ... Einstein redirects here. ... Hans Hahn (1879 - 1934) was an Austrian mathematician who made many contributions to functional analysis, topology, set theory, the calculus of variations, real analysis, and order theory. ... Innsbruck is a city in western Austria, and the capital of the federal state of Tyrol. ... Bonn is the 19th largest city in Germany, located about 20 kilometres south of Cologne on the river Rhine in the Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia. ... “Wien” redirects here. ... Sir Karl Raimund Popper, CH, FRS, FBA, (July 28, 1902 – September 17, 1994), was an Austrian born naturalized British[1] philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics. ... [...]I dont believe in natural science. ... Otto Neurath (December 10, 1882-December 22, 1945) was an Austrian sociologist, political economist, and an unorthodox Marxist. ... Friedrich Waismann (March 21, 1896 - November 4, 1959) was an Austrian mathematician, physicist, and philosopher. ... Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), pictured here in 1930, made influential contributions to Logic and the philosophy of language, critically examining the task of conventional philosophy and its relation to the nature of language. ... The University of Cambridge (often Cambridge University), located in Cambridge, England, is the second-oldest university in the English-speaking world and has a reputation as one of the worlds most prestigious universities. ... The University of Oxford (usually abbreviated as Oxon. ...

Germany and the Berlin Circle

In Germany, members of the Berlin Circle contributed in an essential way to the development of logical empiricism: Berlin Circle can mean the following: A group of philosophers; see Berlin Circle (philosophy) A traffic circle in New Jersey; see Berlin Circle (traffic circle) This is a disambiguation page: a list of articles associated with the same title. ...

• The physicist and philosopher Hans Reichenbach, the founder of the Berlin Circle. He studied with Albert Einstein, Arnold Sommerfeld, Ernst Cassirer, David Hilbert, Max Planck, and Max Born. He is one of the fathers of the frequency interpretation of probability. He taught physics at Technische Hochschule in Stuttgart, philosophy of physics at the University of Berlin; he was chief of the department of philosophy at the University of Istanbul; he taught philosophy at the University of California at Los Angeles. He wrote about the philosophical meaning of the theory of relativity, which he studied under the teaching of Albert Einstein, and quantum mechanics.
• The logician and philosopher Kurt Grelling, a victim of Nazism; it is supposed that he died with his wife in the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1942, although it also has been reported that Grelling was killed in 1941 at the border between France and Spain while he was trying to escape in Spain. Grelling was a teacher in secondary school and was interested in logical problems. A semantic paradox is named after him, the Grelling paradox, formulated in 1908] by Grelling and Leonard Nelson. Grelling collaborated with Kurt Gödel and in 1936 he published an article in which he defended Gödel's theorem of incompleteness against an erroneous interpretation, according to which Gödel's theorem is indeed a paradox like Russell's paradox.
• The philosopher Carl Gustav Hempel, a leading member of logical positivism. He studied philosophy with Hans Reichenbach, physics with Max Planck, logic with von Neumann and mathematics with David Hilbert. He taught in New York, at the City College and at Queens College. Later, Hempel taught at Yale University, at Princeton University and, well on in years, he continued in teaching at the University of California, Berkeley and Irvine, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the University of Pittsburgh. He contributed to the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science. He is well-known for his studies on the logic of confirmation and explanation.

Hans Reichenbach (September 26, 1891, Hamburg, – April 9, 1953, Los Angeles) was a leading philosopher of science, educator and proponent of logical positivism. ... Berlin Circle can mean the following: A group of philosophers; see Berlin Circle (philosophy) A traffic circle in New Jersey; see Berlin Circle (traffic circle) This is a disambiguation page: a list of articles associated with the same title. ... “Einstein” redirects here. ... Arnold Johannes Wilhelm Sommerfeld (December 5, 1868 in Königsberg, East Prussia – April 26, 1951 in Munich, Germany) was a German physicist who introduced the fine-structure constant in 1919. ... Ernst Cassirer (July 28, 1874 – April 13, 1945) was a German philosopher. ... David Hilbert (January 23, 1862, Königsberg, East Prussia – February 14, 1943, Göttingen, Germany) was a German mathematician, recognized as one of the most influential and universal mathematicians of the 19th and early 20th centuries. ... Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck (April 23, 1858 – October 4, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany) was a German physicist. ... Max Born (December 11, 1882 in Breslau – January 5, 1970 in Göttingen) was a mathematician and physicist. ... Probability is the chance that something is likely to happen or be the case. ... City Center seen from Weinsteige Road Stuttgart Palace Square - New Palace Solitude Palace The 1956 TV Tower U.S. Army Kelley Barracks Stuttgart [], located in southern Germany, is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg with a population of 591,528 (as of April 2006) in the city... There is no institution called the University of Berlin, but there are four universities in Berlin, Germany: Humboldt University of Berlin (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) Technical University of Berlin (Technische Universität Berlin) Free University of Berlin (Freie Universität Berlin) Berlin University of the Arts (Universität der... The University of Istanbul is one of the oldest universities in Europe (founded in 1453), and the oldest in Turkey. ... The University of California, Los Angeles, popularly known as UCLA, is a public, coeducational university situated in the neighborhood of Westwood within the city of Los Angeles. ... Two-dimensional analogy of space-time curvature described in General Relativity. ... “Einstein” redirects here. ... Fig. ... Kurt Grelling (March 2, 1886 – September, 1942) was a logician, philosopher and member of the Berlin Circle. ... National Socialism redirects here. ... Auschwitz, in English, commonly refers to the Auschwitz concentration camp complex built near the town of Oświęcim, by Nazi Germany during World War II. Rarely, it may refer to the Polish town of Oświęcim (called by the Germans Auschwitz) itself. ... The Grelling-Nelson paradox is a semantic paradox formulated in 1908 by Kurt Grelling and Leonard Nelson and sometimes mistakenly attributed to German philosopher and mathematician Hermann Weyl. ... Leonard Nelson (July 11, 1882, Berlin - October 29, 1927, Göttingen) was a German mathematician and philosopher. ... [...]I dont believe in natural science. ... Carl Gustav Hempel (* January 8th, 1905 in Oranienburg, Germany † November 9th, 1997 in Princeton, New Jersey) was a philosopher of science and a student of logical positivism. ... Hans Reichenbach (September 26, 1891, Hamburg, – April 9, 1953, Los Angeles) was a leading philosopher of science, educator and proponent of logical positivism. ... Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck (April 23, 1858 – October 4, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany) was a German physicist. ... A separate article covers Saint John Neumann, the American priest. ... David Hilbert (January 23, 1862, Königsberg, East Prussia – February 14, 1943, Göttingen, Germany) was a German mathematician, recognized as one of the most influential and universal mathematicians of the 19th and early 20th centuries. ... NY redirects here. ... The City College of The City University of New York (known more commonly as City College of New York or simply City College, CCNY, or colloquially as City) is a senior college of the City University of New York, in New York City. ... Queens College, Queens College or Queens College is the name of more than one institution, see: Queens College, Cambridge Queens College, Charlotte Queens College, Hong Kong Queens College, London Queens College, New York Queens College, Nassau The Queens College, Oxford Queens College was the... “Yale” redirects here. ... Princeton University is a private coeducational research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States of America. ... Sather tower (the Campanile) looking out over the San Francisco Bay and Mount Tamalpais. ... The University of California, Irvine is a public research university primarily situated in suburban Irvine, California, USA; a significant portion of the campus falls into the neighboring community of Newport Beach. ... The Hebrew University of Jerusalem is one of Israels oldest, largest, and most important institutes of higher learning and research. ... The University of Pittsburgh, commonly referred to as Pitt, is a state-related, doctoral/research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. ... See Reform Judaism article about its Confirmation ceremony. ... An explanation is a statement which points to causes, context, and consequences of some object, process, state of affairs, etc. ...

Scandinavia

• As early as 1930 Scandinavian philosophers were interested in logical positivism. Finnish Eino Kaila employed for the first time the expression "logical neopositivism" for denoting the new philosophical movements (E. Kaila, "Der logistische Neupositivismus" in Annales Universitatis Aboensis, 1930). Eino Kaila published in 1939 a work pervaded by the principles of logical positivism (The human knowledge, in Finnish). He taught philosophy at the University of Helsinki. Among his students was Georg Henrik von Wright, who published a study about logical positivism (The Logical Empiricism, 1943, in Finnish). Wright contributed to the development of modal logic and deontic logic. Finn Jaakko Hintikka, who had Wright as a teacher, pursued Carnap's studies on inductive logic. Hintikka's article "A two-dimensional continuum of inductive methods" in Aspects of inductive logic (eds. J. Hintikka and P. Suppes, 1966), extended the methods Carnap used in The Continuum of Inductive Methods, 1952. Swedish philosopher Åke Petzäll (author of Der logistische Neupositivismus, 1931) was mainly influenced by the Vienna Circle and in 1930 or 1931 he went to Vienna, where he took part in theVienna Circle's meetings. Later he founded a new journal, Theoria, published in Gothenburg; in that journal Hempel published his very first description of the paradoxes of confirmation (Le problème de la vérité, 1937).
• Danish philosopher Jørgen Jørgensen very actively collaborated with neopositivists. After Hans Hahn's death in 1934, Jørgensen became an editor of the Vienna Circle's series Unified Science; later he collaborated on the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, to which he contributed the 1951 essay The Development of Logical Empiricism.
• In Norway, the young Arne Næss was strongly influenced by logical positivism, especially so in his doctorate Erkenntnis und wissenschaftliches Verhalten (1936). This lead to a forceful postivist bent for parts of Norwegian philosophy.

Scandinavia is a historical and geographical region centered on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe and includes the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden. ... Eino Sakari Kaila (1890-1958) was a Finnish philosopher, critic and teacher. ... Eino Sakari Kaila (1890-1958) was a Finnish philosopher, critic and teacher. ... University of Helsinki is not to be confused with Helsinki University of Technology. ... Statue of Georg Henrik von Wright in University of Helsinki Georg Henrik von Wright (pronounced, roughly, fon vrikt, IPA: [je:É”rj hÉ›n:rik fÉ”n-vrik:t],) (June 14, 1916 – June 16, 2003) was a Finnish philosopher, who succeeded Ludwig Wittgenstein as professor at the University of Cambridge. ... In philosophical logic, a modal logic is any logic for handling modalities: concepts like possibility, impossibility, and necessity. ... Deontic logic is the field of logic that is concerned with obligation, permission, and related concepts. ... Jaakko Hintikka in 2006. ... Location of Gothenburg in northern Europe Coordinates: Country Sweden County Västra Götaland County Province Västergötland Charter 1621 Government  - Mayor Göran Johansson Area  - City 450 km²  (174 sq mi)  - Water 14. ... Hempels paradox Also known as the confirmation paradox, it was discovered by Carl Gustav Hempel (1905-1997). ... Arne Dekke Eide Næss (born January 27, 1912) is widely regarded as the foremost Norwegian philosopher of the 20th century[1], and is the founder of deep ecology. ...

United Kingdom

• English philosopher Alfred Jules Ayer played an important role in the spread of logical positivism. His 1936 work Language, Truth and Logic gained immediate success. In that book, he completely accepted both the verification principle and the distinction between analytic and synthetic propositions; hence he asserted that metaphysical sentences are meaningless.

Alfred Jules Ayer (October 29, 1910 _ June 27, 1989), better known as simply A. J. Ayer (and called Freddie by friends), was a philosopher who helped popularise logical positivism in English-speaking countries in his books Language, Truth and Logic (1936) and The Problem of Knowledge (1956). ... The cover of a 1952 version of Language, Truth and Logic Language, Truth and Logic, a work of philosophy by Alfred Jules Ayer, published in 1936) defines, explains and argues for the verification principle of logical positivism, sometimes referred to as the criterion of significance or criterion of meaning. The... In the early twentieth century, the logical positivists put forth what came to be known as the verifiability theory of meaning. ... The terms analytic and synthetic are philosophical terms, used by philosophers to divide propositions into two types: analytic propositions and synthetic propositions. ...

Poland

• Logical positivism had extensive contacts with the group of Polish logicians who developed several branches of contemporary logic. Polish philosophy was greatly influenced by Kazimierz Twardowski, who studied at the University of Vienna and taught at Lwow; he is the founder of Polish analytic philosophy. He taught several Polish philosophers and logicians. Among them were:
  • Jan Łukasiewicz, who developed both the algebra of logic and many-valued propositional calculus, which influenced Carnap's inductive logic and Reichenbach's interpretation of quantum mechanics, in which Reichenbach employed a three-valued propositional calculus. He contributed to Erkenntnis, the journal of logical positivism, edited by Carnap and Reichenbach.
  • Stanisław Leśniewski, who was interested in the logical antinomies.
  • Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz, who taught philosophy of language, epistemology and logic, and contributed to Erkenntnis.
  • Tadeusz Kotarbiński, who asserted that many alleged philosophical problems in fact are scientific problems, i.e. they are the object of empirical science and not of philosophy, which deals with logical and ethical problems only.
• The Polish logician Alfred Tarski, who developed the theory of semantics in formal language, took part in the congresses on scientific philosophy organized by the Vienna and Berlin Circles; he greatly influenced Carnap's philosophy of language. Carnap was interested in logical syntax but, after the publication of Tarski's works, he turned to semantics.

Logic, from Classical Greek λόγος logos (meaning word, account, reason or principle), is the study of the principles and criteria of valid inference and demonstration. ... Kazimierz Jerzy Skrzypna-Twardowski, Ritter von OgoÅ„czyk (October 20, 1866, Vienna, Austria – February 11, 1938, Lwów, Poland) was a Polish philosopher and logician. ... The University of Vienna (German: Universität Wien) in Vienna, Austria is the oldest university in the current Austro-Hungarian domain; it formally opened in 1365. ... Lviv ( Львів in Ukrainian; Львов, Lvov in Russian; Lwów in Polish; Leopolis in Latin; Lemberg in German—see also cities alternative names) is a city in western Ukraine with 830,000 inhabitants (an additional 200,000 commute daily from... Analytic philosophy is a generic term for a style of philosophy that came to prominence during the 20th Century. ... // Jan Łukasiewicz (21 December 1878 - 13 February 1956) was a Polish mathematician born in Lemberg, Galicia, Austria-Hungary (now Lviv, Ukraine). ... In logic and mathematics, a propositional calculus (or a sentential calculus) is a formal system in which formulas representing propositions can be formed by combining atomic propositions using logical connectives, and a system of formal proof rules allows to establish that certain formulas are theorems of the formal system. ... This article is about induction in philosophy and logic. ... There are communes and places that have the name Reichenbach: In Lower Austria, Austria Reichenbach (Litschau) , a part of Litschau, Reichenbach (Rappottenstein) , a part of Rappottenstein, in Germany Reichenbach (Oberlausitz) , in the Niederschlesischer Oberlausitzkreis district, Saxony Reichenbach (Vogtland), in the Vogtlandkreis district, Saxony Reichenbach-Steegen (pop: 1,496 2004, area... Fig. ... Stanislaw Lesniewski (March 30, 1886–May 13, 1939) was a Polish mathematician, philosopher and logician. ... Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz (born on December 12, 1890 in Tarnopol, Galicia (now Ternopil, Ukraine) - April 12, 1963 in Warsaw, Poland) was a Polish philosopher, mathematician and logician. ... Philosophy of language is the reasoned inquiry into the nature, origins, and usage of language. ... It has been suggested that Meta-epistemology be merged into this article or section. ... Logic, from Classical Greek λόγος logos (meaning word, account, reason or principle), is the study of the principles and criteria of valid inference and demonstration. ... Tadeusz KotarbiÅ„ski (b. ... // Alfred Tarski (January 14, 1902, Warsaw, Russian-ruled Poland – October 26, 1983, Berkeley, California) was a logician and mathematician who spent four decades as a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley. ... The introduction to this article provides insufficient context for those unfamiliar with the subject matter. ... In mathematics, logic, and computer science, a formal language is a set of finite-length words (i. ... For other uses, see Syntax (disambiguation). ... The introduction to this article provides insufficient context for those unfamiliar with the subject matter. ...

Italy

Relations between Italian philosophy and logical positivism developed in the early stages of logical positivism.

• The Italian mathematician and philosopher of science Federigo Enriques took part in the congresses on scientific philosophy and collaborated on the International Encyclopedia, and Neurath and Carnap contributed articles to the journal Scientia edited by Enriques.
• In 1934, Ludovico Geymonat published a work on logical positivism: La Nuova Filosofia della Natura in Germania. Geymonat had the opportunity to study with Schlick, Reichenbach, Carnap, and Waismann. He later held the first chair in Italy of philosophy of science.
• The interest of Italian philosophy in logical positivism was primarily directed towards historical research. Francesco Barone distinguished himself with his work Il Neopositivismo Logico, 1953, a detailed and up-to-date historical and philosophical analysis of logical positivism.

Federigo Enriques (5 January 1871 –14 June 1946) was an Italian mathematician, now known principally as the first to give a classification of algebraic surfaces in birational geometry, and other contributions in algebraic geometry. ... Ludovico Geymonat (May 11, 1908 - November 29, 1991) was an Italian Marxist philosopher, who gave an original turn to dialectical materialism. ...

Criticism and influences

Early critics of logical positivism said that its fundamental tenets could not themselves be formulated in a way that was clearly consistent. The verifiability criterion of meaning did not seem verifiable; but neither was it simply a logical tautology, since it had implications for the practice of science and the empirical truth of other statements. This presented severe problems for the logical consistency of the theory. Another problem was that, while positive existential claims ("there is at least one human being") and negative universals ("not all ravens are black") allow for clear methods of verification (find a human or a non-black raven), negative existential claims and positive universal claims do not allow for verification. In the early twentieth century, the logical positivists put forth what came to be known as the verifiability theory of meaning. ... Within the study of logic, a tautology is a statement containing more than one sub-statement, that is true regardless of the truth values of its parts. ...

Universal claims could apparently never be verified: How can you tell that all ravens are black, unless you've hunted down every raven ever, including those in the past and future? This led to a great deal of work on induction, probability, and "confirmation", which combined verification and falsification.

Karl Popper, a well-known critic of logical positivism, published the book Logik der Forschung in 1934 (translated by himself as The Logic of Scientific Discovery published 1959). In it he presented an influential alternative to the verifiability criterion of meaning, defining scientific statements in terms of falsifiability. First, though, Popper's concern was not with distinguishing meaningful from meaningless statements, but distinguishing "scientific" from "metaphysical" statements. He did not hold that metaphysical statements must be meaningless; neither did he hold that a statement that in one century was "metaphysical" while unfalsifiable (like the ancient Greek philosophy about atoms), could not in another century become "falsifiable" and thus "scientific". About psychoanalysis he thought something similar: in his day it offered no method for falsification, and thus was not falsifiable and not scientific. However, he did not exclude it being meaningful, nor did he say psychoanalysts were necessarily "wrong" (it only couldn't be proven either way: that would have meant it was falsifiable), nor did he exclude that one day psychoanalysis could evolve into something falsifiable, and thus "scientific". He was, in general, more concerned with scientific practice than with the logical issues that troubled the positivists. Second, although Popper's philosophy of science enjoyed great popularity for some years, if his criterion is construed as an answer to the question the positivists were asking, it turns out to fail in exactly parallel ways. Negative existential claims ("there are no unicorns") and positive universals ("all ravens are black") can be falsified, but positive existential and negative universal claims cannot, although Popper thought himself these could be deemed as verifiable^[14]. Sir Karl Raimund Popper, CH, FRS, FBA, (July 28, 1902 – September 17, 1994), was an Austrian born naturalized British[1] philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics. ... The Logic of Scientific Discovery is a 1959 book by Karl Popper. ... In science and the philosophy of science, falsifiability is the logical property of empirical statements, related to contingency and defeasibility, that they must admit of logical counterexamples. ... Properties In chemistry and physics, an atom (Greek ἄτομος or átomos meaning indivisible) is the smallest particle still characterizing a chemical element. ...

Logical positivists' response to the first criticism is that logical positivism is a philosophy of science, not an axiomatic system that can prove its own consistency (see Gödel's incompleteness theorem). Secondly, a theory of language and mathematical logic were created to answer what it really means to make statements like "all ravens are black". In mathematics, an axiomatic system is any set of axioms from which some or all axioms can be used in conjunction to logically derive theorems. ... In mathematical logic, Gödels incompleteness theorems are two celebrated theorems proven by Kurt Gödel in 1931. ... Philosophy of language is the reasoned inquiry into the nature, origins, and usage of language. ... Mathematical logic is a subfield of mathematics that is concerned with formal systems in relation to the way that they encode intuitive concepts of mathematical objects such as sets and numbers, proofs, and computation. ...

A response to the second criticism was provided by A. J. Ayer in Language, Truth and Logic, in which he sets out the distinction between "strong" and "weak" verification. "A proposition is said to be verifiable, in the strong sense of the term, if, and only if, its truth could be conclusively established by experience." (Ayer 1946:50) It is this sense of verifiable that causes the problem of verification with negative existential claims and positive universal claims. However, the weak sense of verification states that a proposition is "verifiable... if it is possible for experience to render it probable" (ibid.). After establishing this distinction, Ayer goes on to claim that "no proposition, other than a tautology, can possibly be anything more than a probable hypothesis" (Ayer 1946:51), and therefore can only be subject to weak verification. This defense was controversial among logical positivists, some of whom stuck to strong verification, and claimed that general propositions were indeed nonsense. Alfred Jules Ayer (October 29, 1910 - June 27, 1989), better known as simply A. J. Ayer (and called Freddie by friends), was a British philosopher. ... The cover of a 1952 version of Language, Truth and Logic Language, Truth and Logic, a work of philosophy by Alfred Jules Ayer, published in 1936) defines, explains and argues for the verification principle of logical positivism, sometimes referred to as the criterion of significance or criterion of meaning. The... Within the study of logic, a tautology is a statement containing more than one sub-statement, that is true regardless of the truth values of its parts. ... Look up Hypothesis in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

Subsequent philosophy of science tends to make use of certain aspects of both of these approaches. W. V. O. Quine criticized the distinction between analytic and synthetic statements and the reduction of meaningful statements to immediate experience. Work by Thomas Kuhn has convinced many that it is not possible to provide truth conditions for science independent of its historical paradigm. But even this criticism was not unknown to the logical positivists: Otto Neurath compared science to a boat which we must rebuild on the open sea. W. V. Quine Willard Van Orman Quine (June 25, 1908 - December 25, 2000) was one of the most influential American philosophers and logicians of the 20th century. ... Thomas Samuel Kuhn (July 18, 1922 – June 17, 1996) was an American intellectual who wrote extensively on the history of science and developed several important notions in the philosophy of science. ...

Logical positivism was essential to the development of early analytic philosophy. It was disseminated throughout the European continent and, later, in American universities by the members of the Vienna Circle. A.J. Ayer is considered responsible for the spread of logical positivism to Britain. The term subsequently came to be almost interchangeable with "analytic philosophy" in the first half of the twentieth century. Logical positivism was immensely influential in the philosophy of language and represented the dominant philosophy of science between World War I and the Cold War. Many subsequent commentators on "logical positivism" have attributed to its proponents a greater unity of purpose and creed than they actually shared, overlooking the complex disagreements among the logical positivists themselves. Analytic philosophy is a generic term for a style of philosophy that came to prominence during the 20th Century. ... Alfred Jules Ayer (October 29, 1910 - June 27, 1989), better known as simply A. J. Ayer (and called Freddie by friends), was a British philosopher. ... Philosophy of language is the reasoned inquiry into the nature, origins, and usage of language. ... Philosophy of science is the study of assumptions, foundations, and implications of science, especially in the natural sciences and social sciences. ... “The Great War ” redirects here. ... For other uses, see Cold War (disambiguation). ...

Footnotes

W. W. Norton & Company is an American book publishing company that has remained independent since its founding. ...

Further reading

• Achinstein, Peter and Barker, Stephen F. The Legacy of Logical Positivism: Studies in the Philosophy of Science. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1969.
• Ayer, Alfred Jules. Logical Positivism. Glencoe, Ill: Free Press, 1959.
• Barone, Francesco. Il neopositivismo logico. Roma Bari: Laterza, 1986.
• Bergmann, Gustav. The Metaphysics of Logical Positivism. New York: Longmans Green, 1954.
• Cirera, Ramon. Carnap and the Vienna Circle: Empiricism and Logical Syntax. Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1994.
• Edmonds, David & Eidinow, John; Wittgenstein's Poker, ISBN 0-06-621244-8
• Friedman, Michael. Reconsidering Logical Positivism. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999
• Gadol, Eugene T. Rationality and Science: A Memorial Volume for Moritz Schlick in Celebration of the Centennial of his Birth. Wien: Springer, 1982.
• Geymonat, Ludovico. La nuova filosofia della natura in Germania. Torino, 1934.
• Giere, Ronald N. and Richardson, Alan W. Origins of Logical Empiricism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.
• Hanfling, Oswald. Logical Positivism. Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1981.
• Jangam, R. T. Logical Positivism and Politics. Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 1970.
• Janik, Allan and Toulmin, Stephen. Wittgenstein's Vienna. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973.
• Kraft, Victor. The Vienna Circle: The Origin of Neo-positivism, a Chapter in the History of Recent Philosophy. New York: Greenwood Press, 1953.
• McGuinness, Brian. Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle: Conversations Recorded by Friedrich Waismann. Trans. by Joachim Schulte and Brian McGuinness. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1979.
• Mises von, Richard. Positivism: A Study in Human Understanding. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1951.
• Parrini, Paolo. Empirismo logico e convenzionalismo: saggio di storia della filosofia della scienza. Milano: F. Angeli, 1983.
• Parrini, Paolo; Salmon, Wesley C.; Salmon, Merrilee H. (ed.) Logical Empiricism - Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003.
• Reisch, George. How the Cold War Transformed Philosophy of Science : To the Icy Slopes of Logic. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
• Rescher, Nicholas. The Heritage of Logical Positivism. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1985.
• Salmon, Wesley and Wolters, Gereon (ed.), Logic, Language, and the Structure of Scientific Theories: Proceedings of the Carnap-Reichenbach Centennial, University of Konstanz, 21-24 May 1991, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994.
• Sarkar, Sahotra. The Emergence of Logical Empiricism: From 1900 to the Vienna Circle. New York: Garland Publishing, 1996.
• Sarkar, Sahotra. Logical Empiricism at its Peak: Schlick, Carnap, and Neurath. New York: Garland Pub., 1996.
• Sarkar, Sahotra. Logical Empiricism and the Special Sciences: Reichenbach, Feigl, and Nagel. New York: Garland Pub., 1996.
• Sarkar, Sahotra. Decline and Obsolescence of Logical Empiricism: Carnap vs. Quine and the Critics. New York: Garland Pub., 1996.
• Sarkar, Sahotra. The Legacy of the Vienna Circle: Modern Reappraisals. New York: Garland Pub., 1996.
• Spohn, Wolfgang (ed.), Erkenntnis Orientated: A Centennial Volume for Rudolf Carnap and Hans Reichenbach, Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991.

Werkmeister, William (May, 1937). "Seven Theses of Logical Positivism Critically Examined". The Philosophical Review 46 (3): 276-297.  Werkmeister, William (July, 1937). "Seven Theses of Logical Positivism Critically Examined II". The Philosophical Review 46 (4): 357-376.  Peter Achinstein is a Professor of Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University. ... Stephen Edelston Toulmin (born March 25, 1922) is a British philosopher, author, and educator. ...

See also

People

• Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz
• Alfred Jules Ayer
• Richard Bevan Braithwaite
• Rudolf Carnap
• Herbert Feigl
• Philipp Frank
• Kurt Grelling
• Hans Hahn
• Carl Gustav Hempel
• Tadeusz Kotarbinski
• Thomas Kuhn
• Stanislaw Lesniewski
• Jan Lukasiewicz
• Ernest Nagel
• Otto Neurath
• Karl Raimund Popper
• Hans Reichenbach
• Moritz Schlick
• Alfred Tarski
• Kazimierz Twardowski
• Friedrich Waismann
• Ludwig Wittgenstein
• David Rynin

Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz (born on December 12, 1890 in Tarnopol, Galicia (now Ternopil, Ukraine) - April 12, 1963 in Warsaw, Poland) was a Polish philosopher, mathematician and logician. ... Alfred Jules Ayer (October 29, 1910 _ June 27, 1989), better known as simply A. J. Ayer (and called Freddie by friends), was a philosopher who helped popularise logical positivism in English-speaking countries in his books Language, Truth and Logic (1936) and The Problem of Knowledge (1956). ... Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Rudolf Carnap (May 18, 1891, Ronsdorf, Germany – September 14, 1970, Santa Monica, California) was an influential philosopher who was active in central Europe before 1935 and in the United States thereafter. ... Herbert Feigl (December 14, 1902 - June 1, 1988) was an Austrian philosopher and a member of the Vienna Circle. ... Philipp Frank was an influential philosopher during the first half of the 20th century. ... Kurt Grelling (March 2, 1886 – September, 1942) was a logician, philosopher and member of the Berlin Circle. ... Hans Hahn (1879 - 1934) was an Austrian mathematician who made many contributions to functional analysis, topology, set theory, the calculus of variations, real analysis, and order theory. ... Carl Gustav Hempel (* January 8th, 1905 in Oranienburg, Germany † November 9th, 1997 in Princeton, New Jersey) was a philosopher of science and a student of logical positivism. ... Tadeusz Kotarbiński (b. ... Thomas Samuel Kuhn (July 18, 1922 – June 17, 1996) was an American intellectual who wrote extensively on the history of science and developed several important notions in the philosophy of science. ... Stanisław Leśniewski (March 30, 1886–May 13, 1939) was a Polish mathematician, philosopher and logician. ... The title given to this article is incorrect due to technical limitations. ... Ernest Nagel (November 16, 1901, Prague, Austro-Hungarian Empire -- September 22, 1985, New York City) was among the most important philosophers of science of his time. ... Otto Neurath (December 10, 1882-December 22, 1945) was an Austrian sociologist, political economist, and an unorthodox Marxist. ... Karl Popper Sir Karl Raimund Popper (July 28, 1902 - September 17, 1994), was an Austrian-born, British philosopher of science. ... Hans Reichenbach (September 26, 1891, Hamburg, – April 9, 1953, Los Angeles) was a leading philosopher of science, educator and proponent of logical positivism. ... Moritz Schlick around 1930 Moritz Schlick ( )(April 14, 1882–June 22, 1936) was a German philosopher and the founding father of logical positivism and the Vienna Circle. ... // Alfred Tarski (January 14, 1902, Warsaw, Russian-ruled Poland – October 26, 1983, Berkeley, California) was a logician and mathematician who spent four decades as a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley. ... Kazimierz Jerzy Skrzypna-Twardowski, Ritter von OgoÅ„czyk (October 20, 1866, Vienna, Austria – February 11, 1938, Lwów, Poland) was a Polish philosopher and logician. ... Friedrich Waismann (March 21, 1896 - November 4, 1959) was an Austrian mathematician, physicist, and philosopher. ... Wittgenstein and Hitler in school photograph taken at the Linz Realschule in 1903. ... David Rynin (1905 - ) is an American philosopher. ...

Institutions

• Berlin Circle
• Vienna Circle

Berlin Circle can mean the following: A group of philosophers; see Berlin Circle (philosophy) A traffic circle in New Jersey; see Berlin Circle (traffic circle) This is a disambiguation page: a list of articles associated with the same title. ... Moritz Schlick around 1930 The Vienna Circle (in German: der Wiener Kreis) was a group of philosophers who gathered around Moritz Schlick when he was called to the Vienna University in 1922, organized in a philosophical association named Verein Ernst Mach (Ernst Mach Society). ...

Other philosophical movements

• Positivism
• Sociological positivism

// Positivism is a philosophy developed by Auguste Comte (widely regarded as the first true sociologist) in the middle of the 19th century that stated that the only authentic knowledge is scientific knowledge, and that such knowledge can only come from positive affirmation of theories through strict scientific method. ... This article describes the term positivism as used in social sciences, especially within the science of sociology. ...

External links

About logical positivism

• Feigl, Herbert. 'Positivism in the Twentieth Century (Logical Empiricism)', Dictionary of the History of Ideas, 1974, Gale Group (Electronic Edition)
• Kemerling, Garth. 'Logical Positivism', Philosophy Pages
• Murzi, Mauro. 'Logical Positivism', The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief, Tom Flynn (ed.). Prometheus Books, forthcoming (PDF version)
• Murzi, Mauro. 'The Philosophy of Logical Positivism'
• Passmore, John. 'Logical Positivism', The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Paul Edwards (ed.). New York: Macmillan, 1967, first edition
• Shalizi, Cosma Rohilla. 'Logical Positivism'
• Logical positivism

About philosophical subjects pertinent to logical positivism

• Hájek, Alan. 'Interpretations of Probability', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2003 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)
• Rey, Georges. 'The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2003 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)
• Ryckman, Thomas A., 'Early Philosophical Interpretations of General Relativity', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2001 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)
• Woleński, Jan. 'Lvov-Warsaw School', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2003 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)
• Woodward, James. 'Scientific Explanation', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2003 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)