Throughout history, scientific research has enabled the development of a large number of technologies and the understanding of a wide range of phenomena that make our daily lives easier. Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, Biology, Medicine, Psychology… all of them have been developed over time. But all of them have a common origin, an origin that goes back to antiquity and that starts with the human being’s search for an explanation for the mysteries of life: Philosophy .

And like the previous ones, philosophy has also evolved with the times, affecting scientific development in turn. These advances and changes have generated a great diversity of paradigms, some of which have been forged and discussed in different circles of thinkers. Perhaps one of the best known in modern times was the Vienna Circle , which we will talk about throughout this article.

The Vienna Circle: what was it and who formed it?

An important scientific and philosophical movement is called the Vienna Circle, which was founded in 1921 by Moritz Schlick in the Austrian city after which the group is named. This movement arose with the purpose of forming a group to discuss scientific issues in an informal way, although it would end up being the main ideological core of logical neopositivism and philosophy of science.

This movement included great figures of science from many different disciplines, including (in addition to Schlik himself) Herbert Feigl, Freidrich Waisman, Rudolf Carnap, Victor Kraft, Otto Neurath, Philipp Frank, Klaus Mahn, Carl Gustav Hempel, Felix Kaufmann and Alfred Ayer. Many of them were physicists, mathematicians or professionals who studied different branches of science but who would end up going deeper into philosophical aspects.

Although it was not until 1929 that he produced his first official manifesto, entitled “The Scientific Vision of the World”, in which he proposed philosophy as the main instrument for generating a common language for the different scientific disciplines, relegating it to this function alone.

The movement was centred on a total empiricism that pretended to be based on the advances of logic and physics and that centred its methodology on the inductive method . Another of the main aspects by which it is characterised is its profound rejection of metaphysics, derived from its inductivism and empiricism, considering it to be alien to the reality of phenomena. Its meetings, held on Thursday nights, would end up germinating into the so-called logical neopositivism.

Main philosophical contributions

The vision of reality and science of the members of the Vienna Circle is what would end up being called logical neopositivism. This philosophical-scientific position proposed empiricism and induction as the main elements for scientific study and implied the search for a unity of scientific language under the premise that the different disciplines are all part of the same system with the possibility of unification.

The movement proposed a re-adaptation of the sciences to search for common fundamental laws from which to later deduce those proper to each of their branches. To do this, it was essential to use a single method, the logical analysis of language, with which, through the use of symbolic logic and the scientific method, we seek to avoid false statements and generate a unified knowledge of the world.

For them, the unsolved problems were only because what they were trying to solve were pseudo-problems that before should be transformed into empirical problems . As we have previously commented, this analysis would correspond to the mother of all sciences, philosophy, which should not seek but clarify scientific problems and statements.

With regard to the statements, they considered that there is no unconditionally valid knowledge derived from reason or a priori, only those statements based on empirical evidence and on logic and mathematics being true. In this sense they enunciated the principle of demarcation, in which a statement will be scientific if it can be contrasted and verified by objective experience.

Curiously, no method was considered invalid (even intuition was valid), as long as what resulted from it could be empirically contrasted .

The Vienna Circle touched on a large number of disciplines, including physics (this being possibly the most enhanced and considered), mathematics, geometry, biology, psychology and social sciences. Furthermore, it was characterized by its opposition to metaphysics (as well as to theology), considering that it was based on non-empirical and non-testable data.

The Dissolution of the Circle

The Vienna circle offered interesting contributions and advances both in the field of philosophy and in that of the various branches of science, as we have seen above. However, a few years after its formation, it would eventually dissolve due to the historical events that took place during that time. We are talking about the coming to power of Hitler and Nazism .

The beginning of the end of the circle came when in June 1936, on his way to teach at the University, the pioneer and founder of the Moritz Schlick Circle was murdered on the stairs of the University by one of his former students, Johann Nelböck, who was close to the Nazis (although it seems that the murder was due to delusional ideas of a cello-typical nature with respect to another of Schlick’s students, who had rejected the murderer).

The student would be arrested and imprisoned, but two years later would be released by the Nazis by justifying his actions as an act to prevent doctrines and paradigms harmful and threatening to the nation, due to the fact that much of the Vienna Circle was made up of scientists of Jewish origin.

This murder, in addition to the subsequent rise of Nazism, the annexation of Austria to the German regime and the persecution of Jews that followed, would cause almost all the members of the Vienna Circle to decide to flee to different countries, most of them to the United States. In 1938 the publications of the Circle were banned in Germany . One year later the last work of the Circle, the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, would be published, being the end of the Vienna Circle as such (although they would continue working on their own).

Only one of the members of the Circle would remain in Vienna, Victor Kraft, around whom would be formed the one who would receive the name of Kraft Circle and who would continue to discuss various topics of scientific philosophy.

Bibliographic references:

  • Klimovsky, G. (2005). The misfortunes of scientific knowledge 6ª. Edition. AZ editor. Buenos Aires.
  • Lorenzano, P. (2002). The scientific conception of the world: the Vienna Circle. Redes 18. Journal of Science and Technology Studies, 9 (18). Institute for the Study of Science and Technology. Universidad Nacional de Quilmes. Buenos Aires.
  • Urdanoz, T. (1984). History of Philosophy, T. VII. BAC: Madrid.