Blackwell Reference Online

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Rudolf Carnap, pre-eminent member of the Vienna Circle, was one of the most influential figures of twentieth-century analytic philosophy. The Vienna Circle was responsible for promulgating a set of doctrines (initially in the 1920s) which came to be known as logical positivism or logical empiricism. This set of doctrines provides the point of departure for most subsequent developments in the philosophy of science. Consequently Carnap must be regarded as one of the most important philosophers of science of this century. Nevertheless, his most lasting positive contributions were in the philosophy of logic and mathematics and the philosophy of language. Meanwhile, his systematic but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to construct an inductive logic has been equally influential since its failure has convinced most philosophers that such a project must fail. Carnap was born in 1891 in Ronsdorf, near Bremen, and now incorporated into the city of Wuppertal, in Germany. In early childhood he was educated at home by his mother, Anna Carnap (née Dörpfeld), who had been a schoolteacher. From 1898, he attended the Gymnasium at Barmen, where the family moved after his father's death that year. In school, Carnap's chief interests were in mathematics and Latin. From 1910 to 1914 Carnap studied at the universities of Jena and Freiburg, concentrating first on philosophy and mathematics and, later, ... log in or subscribe to read full text