Logical Empiricism in North America

2003
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Gary L. Hardcastle and Alan W. Richardson, editors

An essential overview of this important intellectual movement

This latest volume in the longest-standing and most influential series in the field of the philosophy of science expands on the discipline’s recent turn. These essays take up the historical, sociological, and philosophical questions surrounding the movement of logical empiricism.

Contributors: Richard Creath, Michael Friedman, Rudolf Haller, Don Howard, Diederick Raven, George Reisch. Thomas Ricketts, Friedrich K. Stadler, Thomas E. Uebel.

This latest volume in the longest-standing and most influential series in the field of the philosophy of science extends and expands on the discipline’s recent historical turn. These essays take up the historical, sociological, and philosophical questions surrounding the particular intellectual movement of logical empiricism—both its emigration from Europe to North America in the 1930s and 1940s and its development in North America through the 1940s and 1950s. With an introduction placing them in their philosophical and historical context, these essays bear witness to the fact that the history of the philosophy of science, far more than a mere repository of anecdote and chronology, might be able to produce a decisive transformation in the philosophy of science itself.

Contributors: Richard Creath, Arizona State U; Michael Friedman, Stanford U; Rudolf Haller, U of Graz; Don Howard, Notre Dame; Diederick Raven, U of Utrecht; George Reisch; Thomas Ricketts, Northwestern U; Friedrich K. Stadler, U of Vienna; Thomas E. Uebel, U of Manchester.

Gary L. Hardcastle is assistant professor of philosophy at Bucknell University.


Alan W. Richardson is associate professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia.

Contents

Introduction: Logical Empiricism in North America Alan W. Richardson and Gary L. Hardcastle

1. Logical Empiricism, American Pragmatism, and the Fate of Scientifi c Philosophy in North America Alan W. Richardson
2. Two Left Turns Make a Right: On the Curious Political Career of North American Philosophy of Science at Midcentury Don Howard
3. Hempel and the Vienna Circle Michael Friedman
4. On Herbert Feigl Rudolf Haller
5. Edgar Zilsel in America Diederick Raven
6. Philipp Frank’s History of the Vienna Circle: A Programmatic Retrospective Thomas E. Uebel
7. Debabelizing Science: The Harvard Science of Science Discussion Group, 1940–41 Gary L. Hardcastle
8. Disunity in the International Encyclopedia of Unifi ed Science George Reisch
9. Transfer and Transformation of Logical Empiricism: Quantitative and Qualitative Aspects Friedrich K. Stadler
10. The Linguistic Doctrine and Conventionality: The Main Argument in “Carnap and Logical Truth” Richard Creath
11. Languages and Calculi Thomas Ricketts

Contributors

Index