How the Cold War Transformed Philosophy of Science
To the Icy Slopes of Logic

The first in-depth study of the development of philosophy of science during the Cold War.

George A. Reisch (Author)

9780521546898, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 21 March 2005

434 pages, 8 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.5 cm, 0.63 kg

'Reisch has written a complex, controversial and richly documented book on the fall of logical empiricism in North America. I highly recommend it.' Philosophy in Review

This intriguing and ground-breaking book is the first in-depth study of the development of philosophy of science in the United States during the Cold War. It documents the political vitality of logical empiricism and Otto Neurath's Unity of Science Movement when these projects emigrated to the US in the 1930s and follows their de-politicization by a convergence of intellectual, cultural and political forces in the 1950s. Students of logical empiricism and the Vienna Circle treat these as strictly intellectual non-political projects. In fact, the refugee philosophers of science were highly active politically and debated questions about values inside and outside science, as a result of which their philosophy of science was scrutinized politically both from within and without the profession, by such institutions as J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. It will prove absorbing reading to philosophers and historians of science, intellectual historians, and scholars of Cold War studies.

1. An introduction to logical empiricism and the Unity of Science Movement in the Cold War
2. Otto Neurath, Rudolf Carnap, Charles Morris and Philipp Frank: political philosophers of science
3. Leftist philosophy of science in America and the reception of logical empiricism in New York City
4. 'Doomed in advance to defeat'? John Dewey on reductionism, values and the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science
5. Red philosophy of science: Blumberg, Malisoff, Somerville and early philosophy of science
6. The view from the left: logical empiricism and radical philosophers
7. The view from the far left: logical empiricism and communist philosophers
8. Postwar disillusionment, anti-intellectualism, and the values debate
9. Horace Kallen's attack on the unity of science
10. Creeping totalitarianism, creeping scholasticism: Neurath, Frank, and the trouble with semantics
11. Frank's neurathian crusade: science, enlightenment, and values
12. 'A very fertile field for investigation': anticollectivism and anticommunism in popular and academic culture
13. Anticommunism investigations, loyalty oaths, and the wrath of Sidney Hook
14. Competing programs for postwar philosophy of science
15. Freedom celebrated: the professional decline of Philipp Frank and the Unity of Science Movement
16. The marginalization of Charles Morris
17. Values, axioms and the icy slopes of logic
18. Professionalism, power and what might have been.

Subject Areas: Philosophy of science [PDA], History of ideas [JFCX], Postwar 20th century history, from c 1945 to c 2000 [HBLW3], General & world history [HBG]