Ernst Mach and the Scientific Conception of the World

1987 ◽  
pp. 166-190
Author(s):  
Richard Von Mises
Keyword(s):  
Ernst Mach ◽  
The World ◽  
Scientific Conception

The Exact Sciences as a Challenge and the Rise of Analytic Philosophy: Frege, the Viennese and Berlin Circles, Wittgenstein

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vittorio Hösle
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Logical Empiricism ◽  
Logical Positivism ◽  
Analytical Philosophy ◽  
Philosophical School ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Scientific Conception

This chapter discusses the emergence of a philosophical school that is now dominant in the Anglo-American world called “analytical philosophy.” The first form taken by analytic philosophy, now long since abandoned, was logical positivism or logical empiricism (the former sympathized with phenomenalism, the latter was more realistically oriented). Logical positivism's goal is a unified science modeled on physics. The intended system of constitution seeks to move from one's own mental qualities to physical objects, from these to the mental qualities of others, and finally to the objects of the social sciences. With regard to the mental qualities of others, behaviorism, which reduces the mental to externally observable behavior, is considered a scientific conception of the world.

Identity and Margin

2019 ◽  
pp. 193-242
Author(s):  
Hugh Epstein
Keyword(s):  
Modern Society ◽  
Individual Identity ◽  
Ernst Mach ◽  
Tess Of The D'urbervilles ◽  
The World ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Material Space

This chapter examines the three great mature works in which Hardy and Conrad most fully explore the indeterminate sensory boundaries between individual organisms and their circumambient world. The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Nostromo are seen to create margins within which the conventional relations between ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ worlds are reimagined. The Mayor is shown to provide two ways of finding identity in the world – that of Elizabeth Jane and that of Henchard – which is illuminated by G. H. Lewes’s discussion of Vorstellung and Empfindung. The intensity of Tess’s sensory participation in the energies of the world of Talbothays is seen to correspond to the revolutionary study of physics and the senses conducted by Ernst Mach. The tragedy of Tess lies in the extinction of this plenitude by the atomising mechanised forces of modern society. In Nostromo, individual identity is called upon to face nature’s silence, and the chapter examines the different courses of Nostromo and Decoud in doing so. Whilst Hardy is drawn to propagation of energies, Conrad’s novel concerns resistance to disintegration, but both authors are shown to establish a new relationship between psychological and material space.

The Vienna Circle

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Murray
Keyword(s):  
Vienna Circle ◽  
Logical Positivism ◽  
Bertrand Russell ◽  
Gottlob Frege ◽  
Rudolf Carnap ◽  
Ernst Mach ◽  
Kurt Gödel ◽  
The World ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Scientific Worldview

In 1922 Moritz Schlick (1882–1936) transformed the Verein Ernst Mach (Ernst Mach Society), a weekly reading group concerned with logical positivism, into an international assembly of academics known as der Weiner Kreis, or the Vienna Circle, which responded to recent developments within analytic philosophy by leading thinkers Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), Gottlob Frege (1848–1925) and Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951). Early members included Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970), Kurt Gödel (1906–1978) and Otto Neurath (1882–1945). In 1929, Neurath published Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung. Der Wiener Kreis (The Scientific Conception of the World: The Vienna Circle), a pamphlet delineating the group’s rejection of metaphysics in favour of a scientific worldview predicated upon empirical phenomena.

Planning According to the ‘Scientific Conception of the World’: The Work of Otto Neurath

1989 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 397-418 ◽  
Author(s):  
A Faludi
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Evidence ◽  
Vienna Circle ◽  
Basic Principles ◽  
The World ◽  
Base Design ◽  
Scientific Conception

Neurath, a prominent member of the Vienna Circle, was involved in much practical reform work. He was also a member of CIAM, and participated in the famous Athens meeting where its basic principles were formulated. But his plans for intensive cooperation with CIAM did not come to fruition, because of fundamental differences regarding the role of scientific evidence in decisionmaking and planning. CIAM members were looking for a solid bedrock on which to base design norms and principles. Neurath was a sceptic and emphasised the pluralistic nature of knowledge. He also held that decisions were to be taken on pragmatic grounds, reflecting one's chosen “path of life”. Experts had no superior skill in this. Neurath developed the Vienna Method of pictorial statistics to allow people to make their own inferences from such evidence as there was. Neurath's views of decisionmaking in planning are very modern, and suggest that the critique of positivism in planning needs to be reconsidered.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document