What Is Logical Empiricism?
William Gruen
Some years ago a few students and friends of the Austrian phil–
osopher, Moritz Schlick, began a series of informal meetings for
the purpose of discussing certain current philosophical problems.
Out of these discussions arose a more or less organized philosophical
theory variously called logical positivism, logical empiricism, scientific
empiricism, or simply the philosophy of the "Vienna Circle". Among
the earliest public expressions of this philosophy was the series of
brilliant
books
known as the
Schriften zur Wissenschaftlichen Wel–
tauffassung.
Later, the German periodical
Erkenntniss
was established
as the organ of the movement, only to be discontinued shortly after
the Nazis came to power. By that time wide interest was shown
in the movement throughout Europe and America and the logical
empiricists organized the first International Congress of scientific
Philosophy which met in Paris in 1935. Quite recently these phil–
osophers and scientists began the publication of the International
Encyclopedia of Unified Science, a cooperative work which promises
to be one of the most important events in modern intellectual
his–
tory.
Recent revivals of rationalistic metaphysics in support of educa–
tional and political authoritarianism, and the general growth of
anti-empirical ideologies in social science impart to the philosophy of
the logical empiricists a militant role in contemporary intellectual
life. By calling them the New Encyclopedists much more than a
superficial, nominal analogue is expressed. For the work of the new
Encyclopedia and the philosophical principles underlying it may
yet occupy a historical function similar to that of their eighteenth–
century predecessors. The philosophy of the New Encyclopedists,
once it is more widely understood, may become like the work of
Diderot, D'Alembert and their collaborators-an important trib–
utary to the main-stream of present-day revolutionary thought.
A synthesis of rationalism and empiricism, so brilliantly achieved
in the mathematical physics of the seventeenth and eighteenth cen·
turies, was the basis of the humanitarian and anti-theological philcs-
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