Der interdisziplinäre "Wiener Kreis" (der "Wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung", des "Logischen Empirismus") entstand um Moritz Schlick im Wien der Zwischenkriegszeit. Er ist bis heute nicht nur in den exakten Wissenschaften und der analytischen Philosophie allgegenwärtig. Er hat darüber hinaus Forschungsfelder wie Ökonomie, Architektur (Werkbund und Bauhaus), Psychologie (Gestalttheorie) oder moderner Literatur mitbestimmt. Seine Wirkung reicht von sozialen Reformbewegungen (Siedlerbewegung) bis in die Kunst der Neuen Sachlichkeit.

ArgumentWhen Copernicus pointed out that the apparent movement of the sun was in fact the effect of the rotation of the earth, he explained his view by referring to a passage in Virgil's Aeneid. Thus he established the link between science and literature. This topic recurred frequently in both science and literature whenever the question of the relativity of motion arose. In this article, I will focus above all on two authors who took up this question: Ernst Mach and Hugo (...) von Hofmannsthal. Moreover I will try to show the different roles of scientific and literary prose in the works of Mach and in Hofmannsthal's Das Glück am Weg. (shrink)

This edited volume on the philosophy of perception is based on the papers presented at the Wittgenstein Symposium 2017 (Kirchberg, Austria). It covers a wide range of recent topics in the philosophy of perception, from realism and objectivity in perception, intentionality and content, the distinction between perception and cognition, the cognitive penetrability of perception to the epistemology of perception. The volume contains papers by Tyler Burge, Howard Robinson, Olivier Massin, Michael Schmitz, Michael Tye, Marcello Fiocco, Guillaume Frechette, Sofia Miguens, Uriah (...) Kriegel, Pierre Jacob, Mark Kalderon, Berit Brogaard, Athanassios Raftopoulos, Ophelia Deroy, Charles Travis, Johannes Roessler, Philipp Berghofer, Harald Wiltsche, Frederique de Vignemont, Romana Schuler, Ulrich Arnswald, David Stern and Hans Sluga. (shrink)

This abridged and revised edition of the original book (Springer-Verlag Vienna, 2001) offers the only comprehensive history and documentation of the Vienna Circle based on new sources with an innovative historiographical approach to the study of science. With reference to previously unpublished archival material and more recent literature, it refutes a number of widespread clichés about "neo-positivism" or "logical positivism". Following some insights on the relation between the history of science and the philosophy of science, the book offers an accessible (...) introduction to the complex subject of "the rise of scientific philosophy" in its socio-cultural background and European philosophical networks till the forced migration in the Anglo-Saxon world. The first part of the book focuses on the origins of Logical Empiricism before World War I and the development of the Vienna Circle in "Red Vienna" (with the "Verein Ernst Mach"), its fate during Austro-Fascism (Schlick's murder 1936) and its final expulsion by National-Socialism beginning with the "Anschluss" in 1938. It analyses the dynamics of the Schlick-Circle in the intellectual context of "late enlightenment" including the minutes of the meetings from 1930 on for the first time published and presents an extensive description of the meetings and international Unity of Science conferences between 1929 and 1941. The chapters introduce the leading philosophers of the Schlick Circle (e.g., Hans Hahn, Otto Neurath, Rudolf Carnap, Philipp Frank, Felix Kaufmann, Edgar Zilsel) and describe the conflicting interaction between Moritz Schlick and Otto Neurath, the long term communication between Moritz Schlick, Friedrich Waismann and Ludwig Wittgenstein, as well as between the Vienna Circle with Heinrich Gomperz and Karl Popper. In addition, Karl Menger's "Mathematical Colloquium" with Kurt Gödel is presented as a parallel movement. The final chapter of this section describes the demise of the Vienna Circle and the forced exodus of scientists and intellectuals from Austria.The second part of the book includes a bio-bibliographical documentation of the Vienna Circle members and for the first time of the assassination of Moritz Schlick in 1936, followed by an appendix comprising an extensive list of sources and literature. (shrink)

Scientific Philosophy: Origins and Development is the first Yearbook of the Vienna Circle Institute, which was founded in October 1991. The book contains original contributions to an international symposium which was the first public event to be organised by the Institute: `Vienna--Berlin--Prague: The Rise of Scientific Philosophy: The Centenaries of Rudolf Carnap, Hans Reichenbach and Edgar Zilsel.' The first section of the book - `Scientific Philosophy - Origins and Developments' reveals the extent of scientific communication in the inter-War years between (...) these great metropolitan centres, as well as presenting systematic investigations into the relevance of the heritage of the Vienna Circle to contemporary research and philosophy. This section offers a new paradigm for scientific philosophy, one which contrasts with the historiographical received view of logical empiricism. Support for this re-evaluation is offered in the second section, which contains, for the first time in English translation, Gustav Bergmann's recollections of the Vienna Circle, and an historical study of political economist Wilhelm Neurath, Otto Neurath's father. The third section gives a report on current computer-based research which documents the relevance of Otto Neurath's `Vienna method of pictorial statistics', or `Isotypes'. A review section describes new publications on Neurath and the Vienna Circle, as well anthologies relevant to Viennese philosophy and its history, setting them in their wider cultural and political perspective. Finally, a description is given of the Vienna Circle Institute and its activities since its foundation, as well as of its plans for the future. (shrink)

Krieg ist seit Anbeginn europäischer Kulturalität ein Topos, der in unterschiedlichster Weise einer theoretischen Reflexion unterzogen wurde und wird.

The current implementation of the Neo-Darwinian model of evolution typically assumes that the set of possible phenotypes is organized into a highly symmetric and regular space. Most conveniently, a Euclidean vector space is used, representing phenotypic properties by real-valued variables. Computational work on the biophysical genotype-phenotype model of RNA folding, however, suggests a rather different picture. If phenotypes are organized according to genetic accessibility, the resulting space lacks a metric and can be formalized only in terms of a relatively unfamiliar (...) structure. Patterns of phenotypic evolution—such as punctuation, irreversibility, and modularity—result naturally from the properties of the genotype-phenotype map, which, given the genetic accessibility structure, define accessibility in the phenotype space. The classical framework, however, addresses these patterns exclusively in terms of natural selection on suitably constructed fitness landscapes. Recent work has extended the explanatory level for phenotypic evolution from fitness considerations alone to include the topological structure of phenotype space as induced by the genotype-phenotype map. Lewontin’s notion of “quasi-independence” of characters can also be formalized in topological terms: it corresponds to the assumption that a region of the phenotype space is represented by a product space of orthogonal factors. In this picture, each character corresponds to a factor of a region of the phenotype space. We consider any region of the phenotype space that has a given factorization as a “type”, i.e., as a set of phenotypes that share the same set of phenotypic characters. Thus, a theory of character identity can be developed that is based on the correspondence of local factors in different regions of the phenotype space. (shrink)

Ulrich Meyer defends a novel theory about the nature of time, and argues against the consensus view that time and space are fundamentally alike. He presents the first comprehensive defense of a 'modal' account, which emphasizes the similarities between times and possible worlds in modal logic, and is easily reconciled with the theory of relativity.

Acknowledgements Andrea Scarantino, Nicholas Shea, Mark Sprevak, and three anonymous referees provided incisive and constructive comments, for which I am very grateful. In 2012, earlier versions of this paper were delivered in Edinburgh, at the Joint Session in Stirling, and at a workshop on natural information in Aberdeen. I thank participants for their feedback.

This paper argues that modal realism has a problem with mathematical impossibilities. Due to the peculiar way it treats both propositions and mathematical objects, modal realism cannot distinguish the content of different mathematically impossible beliefs. While one might be happy to identify all logically impossible beliefs, there are many different mathematically impossible beliefs, none of which is a belief in a logical contradiction. The fact that it cannot distinguish these beliefs speaks against adopting modal realism.

This book explores the complexity of two philosophical traditions, extending from their origins to the current developments in neopragmatism. Chapters deal with the first encounters of these traditions and beyond, looking at metaphysics and the Vienna circle as well as semantics and the principle of tolerance. There is a general consensus that North-American pragmatism and European Logical Empiricism were converging philosophical traditions, especially after the forced migration of the European Philosophers. But readers will discover a pluralist image of this relation (...) and interaction with an obvious family resemblance. This work clarifies and specifies the common features and differences of these currents since the beginning of their mutual scientific communication in the 19th century. The book draws on collaboration between authors and philosophers from Vienna, Tübingen, and Helsinki, and their networks. It will appeal to philosophers, scholars in the history of philosophy, philosophers of science, pragmatists and beyond. (shrink)

This volume is a result of the international symposium “The Tradition of the Lvov-Warsaw School in European Culture,” which took place in Warsaw, Poland, September 2015. It collects almost all the papers presented at the symposium as well as some additional ones. The contributors include scholars from Austria, the Netherlands, Ireland, and Poland. The papers are devoted to the history and reception of the Lvov-Warsaw School, a Polish branch of analytic philosophy. They present the School’s achievements as well as its (...) connections to other analytic groups. The contributors also show how the tradition of the School is developed contemporarily. The title will appeal to historians of analytic philosophy as well as historians of philosophy in Central Europe. (shrink)

The discourse on climate politics so far is an expert and elitist discourse in which peoples, societies, citizens, workers, voters and their interests, views and voices are very much neglected. So, in order to turn climate change politics from its head onto its feet you have to take sociology into account. There is an important background assumption which shares in the general ignorance concerning environmental issues and, paradoxically, this is in corporated in the specialism of environmental sociology itself — this (...) is the category of ‘the environment’. If ‘the environment’ only includes everything which is not human, not social, then the concept is sociologically empty. If the concept includes human action and society, then it is scientifically mistaken and politically suicidal. (shrink)

Morality and economic rationality: integrative economic ethics as the rational ethics of economic activity; Part II. Reflections on the Foundations of Economic ...

Toen Ulrich Libbrecht vanaf de jaren 1970 Vlaanderen en Nederland inspireerde met ‘oosterse wijsheid voor de westerse mens’ was dit pionierswerk. Ondertussen heeft de globalisering zich verder voltrokken, is boeddhisme en meditatie geen exotisme meer en is China dichterbij gekomen. Hoe kijkt de filosoof nu tegen deze ontwikkelingen aan? Dit boek is ontstaan uit gesprekken waarin Libbrecht op een meesterlijke wijze oosterse en westerse inzichten integreert tot een nieuw antwoord op actuele vragen en universele thema’s. Hierin benadrukt hij de (...) waarde van natuur, wetenschap en religieus bewustzijn in de betekenis van re-ligare: herverbinden. In dit boek zet hij geen theorie uiteen, maar neemt de lezer mee op de boeiende weg van het denken, doortrokken van ontroering en een rijke levenservaring. (shrink)

Modern science is, to a large extent, a model-building activity. But how are models contructed? How are they related to theories and data? How do they explain complex scientific phenomena, and which role do computer simulations play here? These questions have kept philosophers of science busy for many years, and much work has been done to identify modeling as the central activity of theoretical science. At the same time, these questions have been addressed by methodologically-minded scientists, albeit from a different (...) point of view. While philosophers typically have an eye on general aspects of scientific modeling, scientists typically take their own science as the starting point and are often more concerned with specific methodological problems. There is, however, also much common ground in middle, where philosophers and scientists can engage in a productive dialogue, as the present volume demonstrates. (shrink)

One of the key events in the relations between the Central European philosophers and those of the Nordic countries was the Second International Congress for the ...

In Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768): Classicist, Hebraist, Enlightenment Radical in Disguise, Ulrich Groetsch offers a vivid portrayal of the Enlightenment radical Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694-1768) and his debt to earlier traditions of scholarship.

Im Hörsaal zeigt sich das europäische Philosophieren jederzeit mündlich und beweglich. Viele pilgerten zwischen 1970 und 1984 nach Paris, wo Michel Foucault dreizehn umfangreiche Vorlesungen hielt. Sein Publikum erstaunte vor dem Wechsel an Themen, Texten und Bildern. Foucault sprach über Machtverhältnisse, Strafregime und diskursive Ordnungen, er thematisierte die Sexualität, das Wahrsagen und wie gut zu leben sei. Seine Anekdoten und Geschichten faszinieren noch in den gedruckten Transkriptionen aller 150 Vorlesungsstunden. Der Essay »Foucault im Hörsaal« versucht den Nachvollzug des mündlichen Foucault (...) und testet den Zusammenhang der mündlich vorgetragenen Gedankenentwicklung. Warum taucht dort - und nur dort - die Figur des Ödipus auf? Es gibt viele rote Fäden im Vortrag Foucaults, der explizit experimentierend ist und sich vom Charakter seiner Bücher deutlich absetzt. Foucault hat Vorlesungen eher wie politische Interventionen als lebhafte Ansprachen gestaltet; er adressiert seine Zuhörer als Zeitgenossen mit offenem Erwartungshorizont. -- Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

This book answers questions about secularization: Does it dissolve religion, or transform it into faith in a universally valid value? Is it restricted to the west or can it occur everywhere? Using ideas of Max Weber, the book conceives secularization as a process comparable to the rational development of science and production. What is the value secularization propagates? Sifting historical texts, Steinvorth argues the value is authenticity, to be understood as being true to one's talents developed in activities that are (...) done for their own sake and provide life with meaning, and as unconditionally commanded. How can a value be unconditionally demanded? This question leads to an investigation of the self that combines Kant's ideas on the conditions of the possibility of experience with modern brain science, and to the metaphysical deliberation whether to prefer a world with creatures able to do both good and evil to one without them. It is not enough, however, to point to facts. We rather need to understand what secularization, religion and their possible rationality consist inches Max Weber's sociology of religion has provided us with the conceptual means to do so, which this book develops. Secularization is rediscovered as the same progress of rationality in the sphere of religion that we find in the development of the spheres of science, art, the economy and politics or public affairs. It proves to be the perfection rather than the dissolution of religion - a perfection that consists in recognizing authenticity as the successor of the absolute of religion. (shrink)