The Cambridge Companion to Logical Empiricism

If there is a movement or school that epitomizes analytic philosophy in the middle of the twentieth century, it is logical empiricism. Logical empiricists created a scientifically and technically informed philosophy of science, established mathematical logic as a topic in and tool for philosophy, and initiated the project of formal semantics. Accounts of analytic philosophy written in the middle of the twentieth century gave logical empiricism a central place in the project. The second wave of interpretative accounts was constructed to show how philosophy should progress, or had progressed, beyond logical empiricism. The essays survey the formative stages of logical empiricism in central Europe and its acculturation in North America, discussing its main topics, and achievements and failures, in different areas of philosophy of science, and assessing its influence on philosophy, past, present, and future.

If there is a movement or school that epitomizes analytic philosophy in the middle of the twentieth century, it is logical empiricism. Logical empiricists created a scientifically and technically informed philosophy of science, established mathematical logic as a topic in philosophy, and initiated the project of formal semantics. Accounts of analytic philosophy written in the middle of the twentieth century gave logical empiricism a central place in the project. The second wave of interpretative accounts was constructed to show how philosophy should progress, or had progressed, beyond logical empiricism.

Introduction; Part I. The Historical Context of Logical Empiricsm: 1. The Vienna circle: context, profile, and development Friedrich Stadler; 2. The Berlin 'Society for Empirical/Scientific Philosophy' Dieter Hoffman; 3. From 'The Life of the Present' to the 'Icy Slopes of Logic': logical empiricism, the unity of science movement and the Cold War George Reisch; Part II. Logical Empiricism: Issues in General Philosophy of Science: 4. Coordination, constitution, and convention: the evolution of the a priori in logical empiricism Michael Friedman; 5. Confirmation, probability, and logical empiricism Maria Carla Galavotti; 6. The structure of scientific theories in logical empiricism Thomas Mormann; Part III. Logical Empiricism and the Philosophy of the Special Sciences: 7. The turning point and the revolution: philosophy of mathematics in logical empiricism from Tractatus to Logical Syntax Steve Awodey and A.W. Carus; 8. Logical empiricism and the philosophy of physics Thomas Ryckman; 9. Logical empiricism and the philosophy of psychology Gary L. Hardcastle; 10. Logical empiricism and the history and sociology of science Elisabeth Nemeth; 11. Philosophy of social science in early logical empiricism: the case of radical physicalism Thomas Uebel; Part IV. Logical Empiricism and Its Critics: 12. Wittgenstein, the Vienna circle, and physicalism: a reassessment David Stern; 13. Vienna, the city of Quine's dreams Richard Creath; 14. That sort of everyday image of logical positivism: Thomas Kuhn and the decline of logical empiricist philosophy of science Alan Richardson.