Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

A philosophical movement that emerged and flourished in the 1920s and 1930s among scientifically oriented philosophers in Europe. In light of important doctrinal modifications, many adherents in the 1940s and 1950s came to prefer the label “logical empiricism”. The centre of the movement was the Vienna Circle, a discussion group of philosophers, scientists and mathematicians convened by Moritz Schlick (1852–1936), who from 1922 until his murder in 1936 held the Chair in the Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences at Vienna, a chair previously held by M ach and Ludwig Boltzmann (1844–1906). Other prominent figures associated with the movement include R eichenbach , C arnap , Otto Neurath (1882–1945) and Carl Hempel. The threat posed by Nazism ended the European phase of the movement in the late 1930s. A number of the leading positivists emigrated to the United States. Abetted by affinities between positivism and PRAGMATISM, these emigrés together with their students and sympathizers emerged as leading figures in American philosophy in the 1940s and 1950s. With its absorption into the mainstream of Anglo-American philosophy, logical positivism ceased to be an identifiable philosophical movement. However, both the refinement and the critical evaluation of ideas associated with logical positivism on the part of those most sympathetic with the movement was a prominent feature of post-1945 ... log in or subscribe to read full text