Abstract

Logical Empiricism and the Physical Sciences: From Philosophy of Nature to Philosophy of Physics introduces us to the philosophy of physics of logical empiricism. However, here the expression “philosophy of physics” does not refer to a consolidated area of philosophy but to the set of concepts, methods, and analyses relating to general relativity, quantum mechanics, and other physical theories that were developed by the members of the logical empiricist movement. Because of the thoroughness with which it treats an issue so unjustly disregarded in the literature, Logical Empiricism and the Physical Sciences is an essential work not only for HOPOS readers interested in the intellectual origins of recent philosophy of physics but also for those interested in general philosophy of science. The main aim of this book is to overturn many of the inherited prejudices about how the logical empiricists—Carnap, Reichenbach, Frank, Neurath, and Feigl, among others—related philosophically to the physics of their time.