The Vienna Circle in the Nordic Countries

✍ Scribed by Friedrich Stadler (auth.), Juha Manninen, Friedrich Stadler (eds.)

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 2010
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 318
• Series: Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook 14
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

The rise of scientific (analytic) philosophy since the turn of the twentieth century is linked to the philosophical interaction between, on the one hand, Ernst Mach, the Vienna Circle around Moritz Schlick and Otto Neurath, the Berlin Group (Hans Reichenbach, Carl G. Hempel), and the Prague Group (Rudolf Carnap, Philipp Frank), and, on the other, philosophers and scientists in Denmark (Niels Bohr, Joergen Joergensen), Finland (Eino Kaila, Georg Henrik von Wright and their disciples), Norway (Arne Næss and his students), and Sweden (Åke Petzäll, the journal Theoria and a younger generation of philosophers in Uppsala). In addition, the pure theory of law of Hans Kelsen achieved wide dissemination in the Nordic countries (through, for example, Alf Ross). 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 Unity of Science which was arranged in Copenhagen in 1936.

Besides considering the interactions of these groups, the book also pays special attention to their interactions, in the context of the Cold War period following the Second World War, with the so-called Third Vienna Circle and with the Forum Alpbach/Austrian College around Viktor Kraft and Bela Juhos (along with Ludwig Wittgenstein and Paul Feyerabend), where the issues of (philosophical and scientific) realism and "psychologism"—the relationship between psychology and philosophy—were matters of controversy.

By comparison with the more extensively investigated and better known transatlantic transfer and transformation of "positivism" and logical empiricism, the developments outlined above remain

neglected and marginalized topics in historiography. The symposium aims to reveal the remarkable continuity of the philosophical enlightened "Nordic Connection". We intend to shed light on this forgotten communication and to reconstruct these hidden scholarly networks from an historical and logical point of view, thereby evaluating their significance for today’s research.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Matter....Pages 1-9
Arne Naess — Dogmas and Problems of Empiricism....Pages 11-31
Niels Bohr and the Vienna Circle....Pages 33-45
Between the Vienna Circle and Ludwig Wittgenstein — The Philosophical Teachers of G. H. von Wright....Pages 47-67
Theoria and Logical Empiricism On the tensions between the National and the International in Philosophy....Pages 69-89
Positivism before Logical Positivism in Nordic Philosophy....Pages 91-103
The Earliest Extensive Receptions of Mach in the North....Pages 105-123
Kaila's Critique of Vitalism....Pages 125-134
Kaila and Reichenbach as Protagonists of ‘Naturphilosophie’....Pages 135-152
Jørgen Jørgensen and Logical Positivism....Pages 153-166
The Debate on Begriffstheorie Between Cassirer, Marc-Wogau — and Schlick....Pages 167-180
The Nature and Status of Scientific Metatheory. The Debate between Otto Neurath and Åke Petzäll....Pages 181-201
Young Ketonen and his Supreme Logical Discovery....Pages 203-217
Empiricism, Pragmatism, Behaviorism: Arne NÆss and the Growth of American-styled Social Research in Norway after World War II....Pages 220-229
Jaakko Hintikka in the Library of Living Philosophers : A Dialogue....Pages 231-243
On Unity and Disunity in the Sciences: Variations of Ancient Themata....Pages 245-262
Enlightenment and Formal Romanticism — Carnap's Account of Philosophy as Explication....Pages 263-279
An Improbable Case of Philosophy: Arne Naess between Empiricism, Existentialism and Metaphysics....Pages 281-292
Back Matter....Pages 315-326

✦ Subjects

Philosophy; History of Philosophy; Modern Philosophy; Logic; Philosophy of Science