The Routledge Handbook of Logical Empiricism (Routledge Handbooks in Philosophy)

Logical empiricism is a philosophical movement that flourished in the 1920s and 30s in Central Europe and in the 1940s and 50s in the United States. With its stated ambition to comprehend the revolutionary advances in the empirical and formal sciences of their day and to confront anti-modernist challenges to scientific reason itself, logical empiricism was never uncontroversial. Uniting key thinkers who often disagreed with one another but shared the aim to conceive of philosophy as part of the scientific enterprise, it left a rich and varied legacy that has only begun to be explored relatively recently. The Routledge Handbook of Logical Empiricism is an outstanding reference source to this challenging subject area, and the first collection of its kind. Comprising 41 chapters written by an international and interdisciplinary team of contributors, the Handbook is organized into four clear parts: The Cultural, Scientific and Philosophical Context and the Development of Logical Empiricism Characteristic Theses of and Specific Issues in Logical Empiricism Relations to Philosophical Contemporaries Leading Post-Positivist Criticisms and Legacy Essential reading for students and researchers in the history of twentieth-century philosophy, especially the history of analytical philosophy and the history of philosophy of science, the Handbook will also be of interest to those working in related areas of philosophy influenced by this important movement, including metaphysics and epistemology, philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. Cover Half Title Series Title Copyright Contents Notes on contributors Introduction Part I The cultural, scientific, and philosophical context and the development of logical empiricism 1 The foundational crisis of modern physics and its cultural significance 2 The German Youth Movement at the start of the twentieth century and logical empiricism 3 Dilthey, historicism, and logical empiricism 4 Varieties of Neo-Kantian influences 5 Hermann von Helmholtz and logical empiricism 6 Ernst Mach and early logical empiricism 7 Bolzano and Brentano and logical empiricism 8 French conventionalism and the Vienna Circle 9 Einstein and logical empiricism 10 The first Vienna Circle and the Erlangen Conference 11 The Vienna Circle and the Ernst Mach Society 12 The Berlin Group and the Society for Scientific Philosophy 13 Women in logical empiricism Part II Characteristic theses of and specific issues in logical empiricism 14 Logic and the foundations of mathematics in early logical empiricism 15 Conceptions of truth in early logical empiricism 16 Verificationism 17 Noncognitivism 18 The unity of science 19 The deductive-nomological model of explanation 20 The partial interpretation of scientific theories 21 The relative a priori 22 Nonstandard logicism 23 Probability in logical empiricism 24 Reichenbach and the problem of induction 25 Schlick, Carnap, and Feigl on the mind-body problem 26 Hempel and confirmation theory 27 Carnap and ontology 28 Neurath on political economy Part III Relations to philosophical contemporaries 29 The Vienna Circle’s relationship with Wittgenstein 30 Cassirer and the logical empiricists 31 Critical rationalism, the Vienna Circle, and the empirical basis problem 32 The Lvov-Warsaw School and logical empiricism 33 Logical empiricism in Northern Europe 34 Logical empiricism in the Anglophone world: Early receptions 35 Pragmatism and logical empiricism Part IV Leading post-positivist criticisms and legacy 36 Quine and post-positivism 37 Kuhn, Carnap, and logical empiricism 38 The bipartite metatheory conception of philosophy 39 Logical empiricism and formal epistemology 40 Carnap’s conception of reason 41 Rethinking the legacy of logical empiricism in North America Index "Logical empiricism is a philosophic movement rather than a set of doctrines, and it flourished in the 1920s and 30s in Europe and in the 40s and 50s in the United States. Though the key thinkers in logical empiricism often disagreed with one another, they were unified by the desire to find a natural and important role for logic and mathematics, and to find an understanding of philosophy according to which it was part of the scientific enterprise. The Routledge Handbook of Logical Empiricism is an outstanding reference source to this challenging subject area, and the first collection of its kind. Comprising 41 chapters written by an international team of contributors, the Handbook is organised into four clear parts: The Cultural, Scientific and Philosophical Context and the Development of Logical Empiricism Characteristic Theses of and Specific Issues in Logical Empiricism Relations to Philosophical Contemporaries Leading Post-Positivist Criticisms and Legacy. Essential reading for students and researchers in the history of the philosophy, the history of analytical philosophy and twentieth-century philosophy the Handbook will also be of interest to those working in areas of philosophy influenced by this important movement, including philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and philosophy of language"-- Provided by publisher