Encyclopedia
The
Vienna Circle 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 . Among its members were
Moritz Schlick, chairman of the Ernst Mach Society, Gustav Bergmann,
Rudolf Carnap,
Herbert Feigl, Philipp Frank,
Kurt Gödel,
Hans Hahn, Victor Kraft,
Karl Menger, Marcel Natkin, Otto Neurath, Olga Hahn-Neurath, Theodor Radakovic, Friedrich Waismann. With the exception of Gödel, members of the Vienna Circle had a common attitude towards philosophy, characterized by two main features: first, experience is the only source of knowledge; second, logical analysis performed with the help of symbolic logic is the preferred method for solving philosophical problems.
History of the Vienna Circle
The prehistory of the Vienna Circle began with meetings on the philosophy of science and
epistemology from 1907 on, promoted by Philipp Frank,
Hans Hahn and Otto Neurath.
Hans Hahn, the older of the three , was a mathematician. He received his degree in
mathematics in 1902. Afterwards he studied under the direction of
Ludwig Boltzmann in
Vienna and
David Hilbert, Felix Klein and
Hermann Minkowski in
Göttingen. In 1905 he received the Habilitation in mathematics. He taught at
Innsbruck and
Vienna .
Otto Neurath studied
sociology,
economics and
philosophy in
Vienna and
Berlin. From 1907 to 1914 he taught in
Vienna at the Neuen Wiener Handelsakademie . Neurath married Olga, Hahn’s sister, in 1911.
Philipp Frank, the younger of the group , studied
physics at
Göttingen and
Vienna with
Ludwig Boltzmann,
David Hilbert and Felix Klein. From 1912, he held the chair of theoretical physics in the German University in
Prague.
Their meetings were held in Viennese coffeehouses from 1907 onward. Frank remembered:
After 1910 there began in Vienna a movement which regarded Mach’s positivist philosophy of science as having great importance for general intellectual life […] An attempt was made by a group of young men to retain the most essential points of Mach's positivism, especially his stand against the misuse of metaphysics in science. […] To this group belonged the mathematician H. Hahn, the political economist Otto Neurath, and the author of this book [i.e. Frank], at the time an instructor in theoretical physics in Vienna. […] We tried to supplement Mach’s ideas by those of the French philosophy of science of Henri Poincaré and Pierre Duhem, and also to connect them with the investigations in logic of such authors as Couturat, Schröder, Hilbert, etc. .
Presumably the meetings stopped in 1912, when Frank went to
Prague, where he held the chair of theoretical physics left vacant by
Albert Einstein. Hahn left
Vienna during the
World War I and returned in 1921. The following year Hahn, with the collaboration of Frank, arranged to bring into the group
Moritz Schlick, who held the chair of
philosophy of the inductive sciences at the
University of Vienna. Schlick had already published his two main works
Raum und Zeit in die gegenwärtigen Physik in 1917 and
Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre in 1918. A central frame of reference for the newly founded discussion group was the
Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung , published by
Ludwig Wittgenstein in 1918.
Under the direction of Schlick, a new regular series of meetings began. In 1926 Schlick and Hahn arranged to bring in
Rudolf Carnap at the University of
Vienna. In 1928 the
Verein Ernst Mach was founded, with Schlick as chairman. In 1929 the Vienna Circle manifesto
Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung. Der Wiener Kreis was published. The pamphlet is dedicated to Schlick, and its preface was signed by Hahn, Neurath and Carnap. In the appendix there is the list of the members of the Vienna Circle.
The Vienna Circle was dispersed when the
Nazi party went into power in
Germany; many of its members emigrated to
USA, where they taught in several universities.
Schlick remained in
Austria, but in 1936 he was killed by a
Nazi sympathizer student in the University of
Vienna.
The Vienna Circle manifesto
It states the scientific world-conception of the Vienna Circle, which is characterized “essentially by
two features.
First it is
empiricist and positivist: there is knowledge only from experience […]
Second, the scientific world-conception is marked by the application of a certain method, namely
logical analysis.” .
Logical analysis is the method of clarification of philosophical problems; it makes an extensive use of the symbolic logic and distinguishes the Vienna Circle
empiricism from earlier versions. The task of
philosophy lies in the clarification - through the method of logical analysis - of problems and assertions.
Logical analysis shows that there are two different kinds of statements; one kind includes statements reducible to simpler statements about the empirically given; the other kind includes statements which cannot be reduced to statements about experience and thus they are devoid of meaning. Metaphysical statements belong to this second kind and therefore they are meaningless. Hence many philosophical problems are rejected as pseudo-problems which arise from logical mistakes, while others are re-interpreted as empirical statements and thus becomes the subject of scientific inquiries.
One source of the logical mistakes that are at the origins of
metaphysics is the ambiguity of natural
language. “Ordinary
language for instance uses the same part of speech, the substantive, for things as well as for qualities , relations , and processes ; therefore it misleads one into a thing-like conception of functional concepts” . Another source of mistakes is “the notion that
thinking can either lead to knowledge out of its own resources without using any empirical material, or at least arrive at new contents by an inference from given states of affair” . The latter notion is typical in
Kantian philosophy, according to which there are synthetic statements a priori that expand knowledge without using the experience. Synthetic knowledge a priori is rejected by the Vienna Circle.
Mathematics, which at a first sight seems an example of necessarily valid synthetic knowledge derived from pure reason alone, has instead a tautological character, that is its statements are analytical statements, thus very different from
Kantian synthetic statements. The only two kinds of statements accepted by the Vienna Circle are synthetic statements a posteriori and analytic statements a priori .
However, the persistence of
metaphysics is connected not only with logical mistakes but also with “social and economical struggles” .
Metaphysics and
theology are allied to traditional social forms, while the group of people who “faces modern times, rejects these views and takes its stand on the ground of empirical sciences” . Thus the struggle between
metaphysics and
scientific world-conception is not only a struggle between different kinds of
philosophies, but it is also – and perhaps primarily – a struggle between different political, social and economical attitudes. Of course, as the manifesto itself acknowledged, “not every adherent of the scientific world-conception will be a fighter” . Many historians of the Vienna Circle see in the latter sentence an implicit reference to a contrast between the so called ‘left wing’ of the Vienna Circle, mainly represented by Neurath and
Carnap, and
Moritz Schlick. The aim of the left wing was to facilitate the penetration of the scientific world-conception in “the forms of personal and public life, in
education, upbringing,
architecture, and the shaping of
economic and social life” . On the contrary,
Schlick was primarily interested in the theoretical study of
science and
philosophy. Perhaps the sentence “Some, glad of solitude, will lead a withdrawn existence on the icy slopes of logic” is an ironic reference to
Schlick.
Unified Science
The final goal pursued by the Vienna Circle was unified science, that is the construction of a "constitutive system" in which every legitimate statement is reduced to the concepts of lower level which refer directly to the given experience. "The endeavour is to link and harmonise the achievements of individual investigators in their various fields of
science" . From this aim follows the search for clarity, neatness, intersubjectivity, and for a neutral symbolic
language that eliminates the problems arising from the ambiguity of natural
language. The Vienna Circle published a collection, called
Einheitswissenschaft , edit by
Rudolf Carnap, Philipp Frank,
Hans Hahn, Otto Neurath, Joergen Joergensen and Charles Morris , whose aim was to present an unified vision of
science. After the publication in
Europe of seven monographs from 1933 to 1939, the collection was dismissed, because of the problems arising from the
World War II. In 1938 a new series of publications started in
USA. It was the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, an ambitious project never completed devoted to unified science. Only the first section
Foundations of the Unity of Sciences was published; it contains two volumes for a total of twenty monographs published from 1938 to 1969. As remembered by
Rudolf Carnap and Charles Morris in the
Preface to the 1969 edition of the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science:
The Encyclopedia was in origin the idea of Otto Neurath. It was meant as a manifestation of the unity of science movement […] Original plans for the Encyclopedia were ambitious. In addition to the two introductory volumes, there was to be a section on the methodology of the sciences, one on the existing state of the unification of sciences, and possibly a section on the application of the sciences. It was planned that the work in its entirety would comprise about twenty-six volumes .
The well known
Thomas Kuhn’s work,
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, was published in this Encyclopedia in 1962, as the number two in the second volume.
The elimination of metaphysics
The attitude of Vienna Circle towards
metaphysics is well expressed by
Carnap in the article 'Überwindung der Metaphysik durch Logische Analyse der Sprache' in
Erkenntnis, vol. 2, 1932 . A
language – says Carnap – consists of a vocabulary, i.e. a set of meaningful words, and a syntax, i.e. a set of rules governing the formation of sentences from the words of the vocabulary. Pseudo-statements, i.e. sequences of words that at first sight resemble statements but in reality have no meaning, are formed in two ways: either meaningless words occur in them, or they are formed in an invalid syntactical way. According to Carnap, pseudo-statements of both kinds occur in
metaphysics.
A word W has a meaning if two conditions are satisfied. First, the mode of the occurrence of W in its elementary sentence form must be fixed. Secondly, if W occurs in an elementary sentence S, it is necessary to give an answer to the following questions :
- What sentences is S deducible from, and what sentences are deducible from S?
- Under what conditions is S supposed to be true, and under what conditions false?
- How S is to verified?
- What is the meaning of S?
An example offered by Carnap concerns the word '
arthropod'. The sentence form "the thing
x is an arthropod" is an elementary sentence form that is derivable from "
x is an animal", "
x has a segmented body" and "
x has jointed legs". Conversely, these sentences are derivable from "the thing
x is an arthropod". Thus the meaning of the words 'arthropod' is determined.
According to Carnap, many words of
metaphysics do not fulfil these requirements and thus they are meaningless. As an example, Carnap considers the word 'principle'. This word has a definite meaning, if the sentence "
x is the principle of
y" is supposed to be equivalent to the sentence "
y exists by virtue of
x" or "
y arises out of
x". The latter sentence is perfectly clear:
y arises out of
x when
x is invariably followed by
y, and the invariable association between
x and
y is empirically verifiable. But – says Carnap – metaphysicians are not satisfied with this interpretation of the meaning of 'principle'. They assert that no empirical relation between
x and
y can completely explain the meaning of "
x is the principle of
y", because there is something that cannot be grasped by means of the experience, something for which no empirical criterion can be specified. It is the lacking of any empirical criterion – says Carnap - that deprives of meaning the word 'principle' when it occurs in metaphysics. Therefore, metaphysical pseudo-statements such as "water is the principle of the world" or "the spirit is the principle of the world" are void of meaning because a meaningless word occurs in them.
However, there are pseudo-statements in which occur only meaningful words; these pseudo-statements are formed in a counter-syntactical way. An example is the word sequence "Caesar is a prime number"; every word has a definite meaning, but the sequence has no meaning. The problem is that "prime number" is a predicate of numbers, not a predicate of human beings. In the example the nonsense is evident; however, in natural language the rules of grammar do not prohibited the formation of analogous meaningless word sequences that are not so easily detectable. In the grammar of natural
languages, every sequence of the kind "
x is
y", where
x is a noun and
y is a predicate, is acceptable. In fact, in the grammar there is no distinction between predicate which can be affirmed of human beings and predicate which can be affirmed of numbers. So "Caesar is a general" and "Caesar is a prime number" are both well-formed, in contrast for example with "Caesar is and", which is ill-formed. In a logically constructed
language – says Carnap – a distinction between the various kinds of predicate is specified, and pseudo-statements as "Caesar is a prime number" are ill-formed. Now, and this is the main point of Carnap's argument, metaphysical statements in which do not occur meaningless words, are indeed meaningless because they are formed in a way which is admissible in natural languages, but not in logically constructed
languages. Carnap attempts to indicate the most frequent sources of errors from which metaphysical pseudo-statements can arise. One source of mistakes is the ambiguity of the verb 'to be', which is sometimes used as a copula and sometimes to designate existence . The latter statement incorrectly suggests a predicative form, and thus it suggests that existence is a predicate. Only modern logic, with the introduction of an explicit sign to designate existence , which occurs only in statements such as , never as a predicate, has showed that existence is not a predicate, and thus has revealed the logical error from which pseudo-statements such as "cogito, ergo sum" has aroused.
Another source of mistakes is type confusions, in which a predicate of a kind is used as a predicate of another kind. For example the pseudo-statements "we know the Nothing" is analogous to "we know the rain", but while the latter is well-formed, the former is ill-formed, at least in a logically constructed language, because 'Nothing' is incorrectly used as a noun. In a formal language, 'Nothing' only means , such as "there is nothing which is outside", i.e. , and thus 'Nothing' never occurs as a noun or as a predicate.
What is the role of metaphysics? According to Carnap, although metaphysics has not theoretical content, it has content indeed: metaphysical pseudo-statements express the attitude of a person towards life. Metaphysics is an art like lyrical poetry. The metaphysician, instead of using the medium of art, works with the medium of the theoretical; he confuses art with science, attitude towards life with knowledge, and thus produces an unsatisfactory and inadequate work. "Metaphysicians are musicians without musical ability" .
Congresses and publications
Vienna Circle was very active in advertising the new philosophical ideas. Several congresses on
epistemology and philosophy of science were organized, with the help of the Berlin Circle. There were some preparatory congresses:
Prague , Königsberg ,
Prague and then the first congress on scientific philosophy held in
Paris , followed by congresses in
Copenhagen ,
Paris ,
Cambridge, UK ,
Cambridge, Mass. . The Königsberg congress was very important, for
Kurt Gödel announced that he has proved the completeness of first-order logic and the incompleteness of formal arithmetic. Another very interesting congress was the one held in
Copenhagen , which was dedicated to quantum physics and causality.
Between 1928 and 1937, the Vienna Circle published ten books in a collection named
Schriften zur wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung , edited by
Schlick and Frank. Karl Raimund Popper’s book
Logik der Forschung was published in this collection. Seven works were published in another collection, called
Einheitswissenschaft . In 1930
Rudolf Carnap and
Hans Reichenbach undertook the editorship of the journal
Erkenntnis, which was published between 1930 and 1940 .
The following is the list of works published in the two collections edit by the Vienna Circle.
Schriften zur wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung , edit by Schlick and Frank:
- Richard von Mises, Wahrscheinlichkeit, Statistik und Wahrheit, 1928
- Rudolf Carnap, Abriss der Logistik, 1929
- Moritz Schlick, Fragen der Ethik, 1930
- Otto Neurath, Empirische Soziologie, 1931
- Philipp Frank, Das Kausalgesetz und seine Grenzen, 1932
- Otto Kant, Zur Biologie der Ethik, 1932
- Rudolf Carnap, Logische Syntax der Sprache, 1934
- Karl Raimund Popper, Logik der Forschung, 1934
- Josef Schächeter, Prolegomena zu einer kritischen Grammatik, 1935
- Victor Kraft, Die Grundlagen einer wissenschaftliche Wertlehre, 1937
Einheitswissenschaft , edit by Carnap, Frank, Hahn, Neurath, Joergensen , Morris :
- 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.
Monographs, arranged in chronological order, published in the
International Encyclopedia of Unified 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 Egdard 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
- Joergen Joergensen, 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
Quoted works
- Foundations of the Unity of Sciences, vol. 1, Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 1969
- Uebel, Thomas, "On the Austrian Roots of Logical Empiricism" in Logical Empiricism - Historical and contemporary Perspectives, ed. Paolo Parrini, Wesley C. Salmon, Merrilee H. Salmon, Pittsburgh : University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003, pp. 76-93
- Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung. Der Wiener Kreis, 1929. English translation The Scientific Conception of the World. The Vienna Circle in Sarkar, Sahotra, ed., The Emergence of Logical Empiricism: from 1900 to the Vienna Circle, New York : Garland Publishing, 1996, pp. 321-340
- Rudolf Carnap, "Überwindung der Metaphysik durch Logische Analyse der Sprache" in Erkenntnis, vol. 2, 1932
Reception in the U.S.
The spread of logical positivism in the USA occurred throughout the 1920s-1930s. In 1929 and in 1932 Schlick was a Visiting Professor at Stanford, while Feigl, who immigrated to the USA in 1930, became lecturer and professor at the University of Iowa. The definite diffusion of logical positivism in the U.S. was due to Carl Hempel,
Hans Reichenbach,
Rudolf Carnap, Philipp Frank and
Herbert Feigl, who emigrated and taught in the
U.S.- E. Nagel, Nature and Convention in: The Journal of Philosophy, 26, 1929, in which Nagel discussed Reichenbach's interpretation of the theory of relativity;
- S. Hook, Personal Impression of Contemporary German Philosophy in: The Journal of Philosophy, 27, 1930, in which Hook presented a favorable report on logical positivism;
- A. E. Blumberg and H. Feigl, Logical Positivism: A New Movement in European Philosophy in: The Journal of Philosophy, 28, 1931.
Another link to the U.S. is
Willard Van Orman Quine who traveled in 1932-1933 as Sheldon Traveling Fellow to
Vienna,
Prag, and
Warsaw.
Reception in the UK
Alfred Jules Ayer acquainted British acedeme with the work of the Vienna Circle. Also Karl Popper was important for the reception and critique of their work, even though he never participated in the meetings of the Vienna Circle.
References
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Parrini, Paolo; Salmon, Wesley C.; Salmon, Merrilee H. Logical Empiricism - Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003.
- Salmon, Wesley and Wolters, Gereon , 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 , Erkenntnis Orientated: A Centennial Volume for Rudolf Carnap and Hans Reichenbach, Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991.
See also
Logical positivism
External links
