Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970) was a German philosopher who pioneered logical positivism, empiricism and symbolic logic. He is recognized as one of the greatest exponents of the philosophy of science of the early 20th century, since among other things he contributed to the consolidation of a paradigm of scientific rigor within philosophy.

Next we will see Rudolf Carnap’s biography , including some of the most important aspects of his life and work.

Rudolf Carnap: biography of a philosopher of science

Rudolf Carnap was born on May 18, 1891 in Ronsdorf, a town in northwest Germany. From 1910 to 1914 he studied philosophy and traditional logic, as well as mathematics , at the University of Jena.

In this institution he worked together with Gottlob Frege, who was recognized as the greatest exponent of mathematical logic of the 19th century. At the same university, but in 1921 he graduated as a doctor with a research on the concept of space , which he divided into three types: formal space, physical space and intuitive space.

From this he began to develop in an important way as a philosopher of science and discusses the theories of symbolic logic and physics; at which time he also addressed issues related to time and causality.

The Vienna circle and logical empiricism

At the intellectual dawn of 20th century Vienna, there was a small group of philosophers and mathematicians who met to discuss some issues related to philosophy and science . This group was known as the Vienna Circle, and its founder, the empiricist Moritz Schlick, had invited Carnap to work with them, within the circle and also at the University of Vienna.

Part of the work of the Vienna circle was to create a scientific perspective of the world, where it was possible to apply the precision of the exact sciences to philosophical reflections and theories. In contrast to the approach of traditional logic, which studies the principles of demonstration and verification of inferences through language without strict formalization; Rudolf Carnap defended the principles of symbolic logic or mathematical logic . The latter translates and systematizes, through a formalist language, intuitive notions of mathematics such as sets, numbers, algorithms, among others.

Through the concept of the criterion of stability, Carnap and other philosophers of logical empiricism rejected the more speculative theological and metaphysical traditions, not so much because they considered them false but because they did not make significant statements in logical and formalistic terms. In addition, they considered that many of the philosophical questions had no real meaning, and that they were posed by rhetoric and excessive language.

Carnap’s logical empiricism in Germany and the United States

From here he made various connections with philosophers of science of empirical tradition who worked in Germany, and finally, in the year 1930 he created a special forum for the development of a new scientific philosophy, called Erkenntniss.

Through the influence of German empiricism, Carnap held that first-order terms and statements were reducible to second-order ones through a principle known as the principle of reducibility .

Accordingly, all concepts used to describe the empirical fact are fully definable by terms that refer exclusively to aspects of immediate experience. Thus, all empirical statements are susceptible to becoming statements about immediate experience.

In his period within the circle and the University of Vienna, Carnap developed a more liberal approach of empiricism , from which he defended that the concepts of empirical science are not completely definable by in purely experiential terms; but that, at least, they can be defined by means of “reduction statements” and “observation statements”. The latter may serve to confirm an empirical statement, but not so much to provide strict proof of existence or refutation.

Finally, he worked as a professor and researcher at the University of Prague, but in view of the conflictive political context prior to World War II, Carnap went to the United States, where he was nationalized in 1941. In this country he worked as a professor at the University of Chicago, as a researcher at Harvard and later at UCLA. Through new influences and interests, Carnap continued to theorize about semantics, the principle of verification, probability, induction and philosophy of language .

Outstanding works

Rudolf Carnap’s most important publication, which among other things established him as one of the most important logical positivists of the 20th century , was the book Logical Syntax of Language , published in 1934. He argued that there is no such thing as logic or true language, beyond the concrete objectives that are pursued when we use it.

Other of Rudolf Carnap’s most important works are Des Logische Aufbau der Welt (The Logical Structure of the World), and Pseudo-Problems of Philosophy , both from 1928. Among the most recent and also outstanding works are Two essays on entropy , from 1977; two volumes of Studies in inductive logic and probability , from 1971 and 1980 respectively; and Metallography , from 1995.

Bibliographic references:

  • Duignan, B. & Hempel, C. (2018). Rudolf Carnap. Recovered 23 July 2018. Available at https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rudolf-Carnap.
  • Arthur, P. (1963). The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap. Retrieved July 23, 2018. Available at http://fitelson.org/confirmation/carnap_schilpp_volume.pdf.