Between physics and philosophy.

BETWEEN PHYSICS AND PHILOSOPHY the briefest newspaper articles to textbooks of sociology running into many volumes.I shall not state here any opinion as to whether the crisis of our time is characterized correctly by these expressions that are so popular. The principal aim of these papers is to show that one can make use of the recent progress of the physical sciences for this argument only if one interprets it according to the pattern of some cherished philosophy, disregarding the scientific meaning of modern physics.These essays, however, attempt to reach this goal not so much through a polemic against the philosophy of history described above as through an investigation of the way the principles of modern science are to be understood within science itself. It will be shown that, with the right interpretation, the results of twentieth-century science can be used just as much and just as little as a characteristic of the change from materialism to spiritualism as the results of the physics of Newton or of any other period. This change -in so far as it really exists, which we do not consider here -has its roots in a change of human relations and is carried over from that field to the interpretation of physical science. The progress of the latter itself has nothing whatsoever to do with these interpretations.The misinterpretation of scientific principles, as will be shown, can be avoided if, in every statement found in books on physics or chemistry, one is careful to distinguish an experimentally testable assertion about observable facts from a proposal to represent 8 BETWEEN PHYSICS AND PHILOSOPHY Hans Driesch. Some idea of the opinions of this group, from which the "Vienna Circle" evolved twenty years later, may be obtained from Chapter I.How the teachings of Mach developed further in this group, and what was regarded as most essential in them, may be seen from Chapter II, written in 1917 after the death of Mach and published in memory of him.The development took on a more solid form when H. Hahn, in the first half of the twenties, called attention to the importance of the work of L. Wittgenstein. The latter was also Viennese, but did not belong to the positivist circle. He had gone to England and had become a student of Bertrand Russell. Hahn had the opinion that the reconstruction of positivism could only be carried out successfully by making use of the new logic as founded by B. Russell, A. N. Whitehead, and L. Wittgenstein. Many ideas of these three logicians were adopted, but they were given a turn toward a radical empiricism and positivism. Hahn proposed the appointment of a special professor for the philosophy of science at the University of Vienna. This post had been filled by Ernst Mach. Since his retirement in 1901 it had been vacant, except for an interval of two years when it was occupied by L. Boltzmann in addition to his physics teaching. Hahn was looking for someone who could become the successor of Mach and work along the line of the new turn in the doctrine of positivism. He succeeded in bringing about the appointment of IO BETWEEN PHYSICS AND PHILOSOPHY cooperation between the "Vienna Circle" and the Berlin group around Hans Reichenbach. The latter group, however, has never completely accepted the radical program of the Vienna positivism.A picture of the views of the "Vienna Circle" during the early years of its existence appears in Chapter III. Here we find the synthesis of positivism and the new logic explicitly presented. It is also interesting that since the rigorously logical formulation of the positivistic ideas, their connection with American pragmatism has become clearly revealed; in this essay this connection is distinctly emphasized. The growing awareness of this congeniality was accompanied by a growing emphasis upon the fact that scientific theories are influenced by the social and political atmosphere. The ivory-tower attitude of the pre-war positivism had begun to crumble.The article is a lecture, given at the first public appearance of the "Vienna Circle" as a closed group, in 1929. This took place at the Congress for the Epistemology of the Exact Sciences, which included both the Vienna and the Berlin groups. It met with the Congress of German Mathematicians and Physicists in Prague. In passing it might be said that this was an excellent example of the liberal attitude of the government of the Czechoslovakian Republic; it greeted and even supported financially this gathering in its capital of scientists from all German-speaking countries.The German mathematicians and physicists, like all BETWEEN PHYSICS AND PHILOSOPHY physics in the struggle against the positivism of Mach. I succeeded also in bringing about the creation of a special professorship of the philosophy of science at the University of Prague, to which, soon after the congress, Rudolf Carnap was appointed. In this way, in Vienna as well as in Prague, the traditions of Mach were continued by Schlick and Carnap, not as an orthodox "Machistic" school, to be sure, but rather in line with the synthesis carried out by the "Vienna Circle." In the following years an interest in the work of the "Vienna Circle" arose in many countries, especially in France, Scandinavia, and the United States. In this country Herbert Feigl (now at the University of Minnesota), a student of Schlick and later of Bridgman, coined the term "logical positivism." Several young American philosophers traveled to Vienna and Prague in order to come into scientific contact with Schlick and Carnap. Among them were W. V. Quine (now at Harvard) and E. Nagel (now at Columbia). In particular, Charles W. Morris of Chicago recognized the connection with American pragmatism and publicized the idea of cooperation between the two groups. It was decided, for the purpose of this cooperation, to call a special congress, for which the name "Congress for the Unity of Science" was coined by Otto Neurath. A preliminary conference in preparation for this congress took place in 1934 in Prague. C. W. Morris said there: "The doctrine of the Vienna Circle is 'logical positivism,' that of the American pragmatists is 'bio-\*Naturwissenschaften, 1917; see above, Chapter II. I. Introduction: Historical Background (1908) II. The Importance of Ernst Mach’s Philosophy of Science for Our Times (1917) III. Physical Theories of the Twentieth Century and School Philosophy (1929) IV. Is There a Trend Today Toward Idealism in Physics? (1934) V. The Positivistic and the Metaphysical Conception of Physics (1935) VI. Logical Empiricism and the Philosophy of the Soviet Union (1935) VII. Philosophical Misinterpretations of the Quantum Theory (1936) VIII. What “Length” Means to the Physicist (1937) IX. Determinism And Indeterminism in Modern Physics (1938) X. Ernst Mach and the Unity of Science (1938) Index