The Murder of Professor Schlick: The Rise and Fall of the Vienna Circle
- ISBN-10
- 0691164908
- ISBN-13
- 9780691164908
- Category
- History
- Pages
- 336
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2020-10-13
- Publisher
- Princeton University Press
- Author
- David Edmonds
Description
"It is the morning of June 22, 1936. The professor of inductive logic at the University of Vienna, Moritz Schlick, is making his accustomed way up the wide stone stairs that lead into the University. It is 9:15 and a former student of Schlick's, Johann Nelböck, is loitering on the staircase, waiting for him. As Schlick approaches, Johann Nelböck lifts a pistol and fires four shots. A witness hears him shout, "Now you damned bastard, there you have it". Schlick dies immediately. His death spells the ending of the remarkable philosophical grouping of which he had been founder and moving force, the Vienna Circle. This extraordinary group of mathematicians, logicians, physicists, philosophers and social scientists has been holding regular meetings under Schlick's leadership since 1922. But in 1936 the political landscape in Austria is darkening, and exile for members of the Circle already beckons. It is not to be a happy experience for many of them-uprooted from Viennese culture, separated from old friends and intellectual soul-mates. The governing principle for which the Circle is best known, logical positivism, famously maintained that only two types of propositions were meaningful: those that could be verified through experience (e.g. water boils at 100 degrees centigrade) and those that were analytically true - true by virtue of the terms they employed (e.g. all bachelors are unmarried men). All other propositions were, literally, meaningless. These included propositions about God and certain propositions about aesthetics and morality (such as 'murder is wrong'). A list of names linked to the Circle reads like a Who's Who of 20th century philosophy, mathematics and science. In addition to Schlick, it includes Rudolf Carnap, Otto Neurath, Phillip Frank, Hans Hahn, Olga Hahn-Neurath, Karl Menger, Friedrich Waismann, Herbert Feigl, Kurt Gödel, Carl Hempel, W.V.O. Quine, A J Ayer, and also, indirectly but influentially, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper. For a period, Logical Positivism with its attempt to analyze 'truth', 'knowledge', and the limits of meaning, was the most fashionable movement in the world. Though its central tenets were ultimately abandoned, the Circle - especially through the exile of its key figures in the UK and US - had an enormous influence on 20th century philosophy and beyond. This book is about the origins, the short, influential life and the untimely death of the Vienna Circle, and the afterlife of its adherents"--
Get the book
Other editions
-
- 2022-03
- 336 pages
- Paperback
- Princeton University Press
-
- 2020-10-13
- 336 pages
- Ebook
- Princeton University Press
Similar books
-
Would You Kill the Fat Man?: The Trolley Problem and What Your Answer Tells Us about Right and Wrong
By David EdmondsIn this book, David Edmonds, coauthor of the bestselling Wittgenstein's Poker, tells the riveting story of why and how philosophers have struggled with this ethical dilemma, sometimes called the trolley problem.
-
Wittgenstein's Vienna Revisited
By Allan JanikThese essays elucidate Wittgenstein's perspective on our culture.
-
Wittgenstein's Poker: The Story of a Ten-Minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers
By David Edmonds, John EidinowMoore then replied to Wittgenstein's reply, entitling his talk “P but I do not believe P.” “Moore's Paradox” addressed such propositions as “Smith left the room but I don't believe it” and “There is a fire in this room and I don't ...
-
Exact Thinking in Demented Times: The Vienna Circle and the Epic Quest for the Foundations of Science
By Karl SigmundHis rival Sigmund Freud grudgingly admitted that the method sometimes worked. Freud himself refrained from getting involved with the Friedrich Adler case, possibly because he felt too close to it. Indeed, his by-now world-famous ...
-
Wittgenstein's Vienna
By Stephen Toulmin, Stephen Edelston Toulmin, Allan JanikThis is a remarkable book about a man (perhaps the most important and original philosopher of our age), a society (the corrupt Austro-Hungarian Empire on the eve of dissolution), and a city (Vienna, with its fin-de siècle gaiety and ...
-
Paul Grice: Philosopher and Linguist
By S. ChapmanThis is the first book to consider Grice's work as a whole.
-
Bertrand Russell
By A. J. AyerWhen some men were also sentenced to hard labor for distributing the leaflet, Russell wrote a letter to The Times, saying that he was the author of the leaflet and that if anyone was to be prosecuted for ...
-
Philosophy Bites Back
By David Edmonds, Nigel WarburtonPresents interviews with leading philosophers who discuss the ideas and works of the most important philosophers throughout history, including Socrates, Wittgenstein, and Derrida.
-
Wittgenstein: The Man and His Philosophy
By Alfred Jules AyerBriefly traces the life of the Vienna-born philosopher, examines his major works, and discusses the fundamental concepts of his philosophy
-
Carnap and Twentieth-Century Thought: Explication as Enlightenment
By A. W. CarusThis book places his central ideas in a broad cultural, political and intellectual context, showing how he synthesised many different currents of thought to achieve a philosophical perspective that remains strikingly relevant in the twenty ...