Logical Positivism and Logical Empiricism Research Paper

The logical positivism of the Vienna Circle, which came also to be called ‘logical empiricism,’ contained a number of claims about the nature of empirical science, in particular a strong rejection of the view that the subject-matter, methods, and logic of the natural sciences differ from those of the social and human sciences (the ‘unified science’ program). Three surveys of the philosophy of logical positivism are Kraft (1968), Barone (1986), and Haller (1993); a very thorough history of the movement and of its influence is provided in Stadler (1997); Ayer (1959) is a representative anthology of work by the logical positivists and associated philosophers.

One remarkable sociological feature of the writings of philosophers belonging to or associated with the Vienna Circle is the militant, polemical tone of the criticisms of alternative accounts of the nature of the nonnatural sciences. Zilsel (1941, p. 131) identified the Circle’s philosophical enemies as belonging to the ‘anticausal rebellion’ in philosophy after 1890 and mentions in this connexion Windelband, Rickert, Dilthey, Weber, Troeltsch, neovitalism, and phenomenology. This polemical attitude went hand in hand with great self-consciousness about the historical, social, and sociological position of the movement. Neurath’s ([1936], 1981) monograph, first published in French as ‘Le developpement du Cercle de Vienne et l’avenir de l’Empirisme logique’ (The development of the Vienna Circle and the future of logical empiricism), which stresses the Austrian context of logical empiricism (Bolzano, Brentano, the near absence of Kantianism in Austria) is exemplary in this connexion (see also Zilsel 1992 and, on Neurath, Hegelsmann 1979).

Among the more important early studies of the foundations of the human and social sciences are Neurath’s ([1931], 1981) monograph ‘Empirische Soziologie. Der wissenschaftliche Gehalt der Geschichte und Nationalokonomie’ (Empirical sociology. The scientific content of history and of political economy), his Foundations of the Social Sciences (1944) and two books by Felix Kaufmann (1936, 1944) on the methodology of the social sciences. In addition to their work on the nature of science, members of the Circle such as Edgar Zilsel wrote on the history and sociology of science. Surprisingly, one of the most important philosophical works to emerge from the Circle, Carnap’s ([1928], 1968). Der logische Aufbau der Welt (The Logical Structure of the World ) contains the claim that geistige (spiritual, intellectual) objects, i.e., cultural, historical, and sociological objects, must be distinguished from both physical and psychological objects; the autonomy of this class of objects has, Carnap says, too often been overlooked; recent philosophy of history after Dilthey is credited with the discovery of this autonomy. Carnap distinguishes between episodic physical and psychological manifestations of spiritual objects and the enduring physical objects which are documentations of spiritual entities—the buildings that document an artistic style ([1928], 1968, sections 23–4). He explains that he is able to provide only hints as to how cultural objects are to be constructed since ‘the psychology (phenomenology) of cultural knowledge’ is much less developed than that of perception (Carnap [1928], 1968, Sects. 150–1).

But thanks to Neurath the logical positivists came to reject the view that physical, psychological, and cultural entities all deserve different cages in the philosopher’s zoo. The doctrine of physicalism, as expounded in Neurath’s ([1931], 1959) paper ‘Soziologie im Physikalismus’ (Sociology in physicalism) and in his ([1931], 1981) monograph, ‘Empirische Soziologie’, is the view that:

every scientific proposition is a proposition about a law-like ordering of empirical facts. All scientific propositions can be connected with one another and form a unified domain, which embraces only propositions about observable facts. For this domain the name Unified Science is suggested. If one wants to emphasise that in this way everything turns out to be physics, one may speak of physicalism. (Neurath [1931], 1981, p. 424)

Since ‘observable’ means observable by different people (intersubjectivity) psychological entities must be physical; since the facts in question are the spatiotemporal entities of physics, ‘propositions about sociological facts’ must be about such entities. Psychology, history, and political economy deal only in gestures, words, ways of acting, but not in motives, subjects, personalities, if these cannot be described as spatiotemporal entities (Neurath [1931], 1981, pp. 425, 431). The language of Unified Science is ‘derivable by and large from modifications of the language of everyday life’ once all ‘pre-physicalistic’ components have been eliminated (Neurath [1931], 1981, p. 537). Sociology is no Geisteswissenschaft but ‘social behaviorism’ (Neurath [1931], 1981, sections 3–4). Marxism, he thinks, comes closer than any other present-day sociological theory to being a genuinely empirical sociology (Sect. 7).

Whereas interest in the status of sociology looms large in Neurath’s formulation of physicalism, it is psychology that is considered at length in Carnap’s turn towards physicalism in his paper, ‘Die physikalische Sprache als Universalsprache der Wissenschaft’ (Physical language as the universal language of science, Carnap 1931, cf. also Carnap 1932 3). But Carnap also claims that:

if our thesis concerning the translatability of psychological propositions into the physical language is correct, the corresponding thesis for the propositions of (empirical) sociology is readily grasped … all historical, cultural, economic processes belong here. But we have in mind only the genuinely scientific, logically acceptable propositions of this domain. In the so-called ‘Geisteswisenschaften’ or ‘sciences of culture’, as they are at present, logical analysis often reveals pseudo-concepts, concepts which have no correct definition, concepts therefore for which no empirical criteria have been laid down … (Examples: ‘objective Geist (spirit)’, ‘meaning of history’) … sociology deals with nothing other than states, processes, ways of behaving of groups or individual subjects (humans or other animals), reciprocal reactions, and reactions to environmental processes (Carnap 1931, p. 451)

Carnap rejects all alternatives to observation such as Verstehen (understanding), empathy, and feeling one’s way into historical products and events in order to grasp their essence or sense (p. 434).

Kaufmann was a regular participant in the meetings of the Vienna Circle, rather than a member of it, and was heavily influenced by phenomenology. But it is his work on a finitistic philosophy of mathematics rather than on the foundations of the social sciences which is phenomenological. In his philosophy of science he argues for a distinction between two sorts of laws: empirical, synthetic propositions, on the one hand, and scientific rules of procedure (theoretical laws) in terms of which ‘warranted predictions’ are defined, on the other hand. The distinction is applied so as to yield a unified account of scientific methodology or of the logic of scientific procedure, to criticize physicalism and to bring out differences between the subject matters of the natural and the nonnatural sciences. Of particular interest are Kaufmann’s analyses of the conceptual foundations of a number of different social and human sciences, in particular his discussion of what some claim has to be considered as the most important research program in the social sciences in Vienna at the time, Austrian marginal utility theory, in the course of which he rejects the apriorism of Ludwig von Mises (Kaufmann 1936, pp. 255–90, Kaufmann 1944 Chap. XVI).

Although it was the positivists’ work on the logical structure of scientific theories that attracted most attention, they also wrote extensively on the history and sociology of science and on the sociology of knowledge. This is particularly true of Neurath, in the publications already mentioned, and of Edgar Zilsel— both heavily influenced by Marx. Neurath’s holism and sociological approach to science lead to a view which anticipates some aspects of the views later developed by T. S. Kuhn (see Haller 1986, pp. 130ff.). Zilsel (1942, 1976) investigated in detail the role of craftsmen as pioneers of causal thinking in the period before 1600 and made many contributions to a program he formulated as follows:

The rise of science is usually studied by historians who are primarily interested in the temporal succession of the scientific discoveries. Yet the genesis of science can be studied also as a sociological phenomenon. The occupations of the scientific authors and of their predecessors can be ascertained. The sociological function of these occupations and their professional ideals can be analyzed. The temporal succession can be interrupted and relevant sociological groups can be compared to analogous groups in other periods…. It is strange how rarely investigations of this kind are made…. there is no reason why the most important and interesting intellectual phenomena should not be investigated sociologically and causally. (Zilsel 1942, p. 560)

Perhaps the most thorough confrontation of views like those of the logical positivists with the views of such founders of the sociology of knowledge as Scheler and Mannheim is given by Kaufmann (1944, ch. XIV).

Logical positivism shaped subsequent philosophy of science. Such classic investigations of the nature of scientific laws and explanation as Ernest Nagel’s The Structure of Science (1961) and Carl Hempel’s (1965) collection of papers Aspects of Scientific Explanation emerged from the discussions of the Viennese logical positivists and of related groups in Berlin and Poland.

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