Logical Empiricism: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives

Logical empiricism flourished in the 1920s and 1930s and dominated epistemology until the 1960s. A program for the study of science arguing that all scientific claims must be evaluated solely on the basis of empirical evidence, it has been derided by critics who claim it has been superseded in more recent decades. This volume reexamines the origins of logical empiricism and offers fresh insights into its relationship to contemporary philosophy of science. It also provides new insights into the relationships between this movement and continental philosophy, and challenges the view that logical empiricism and post-positivist philosophy of science are categorically opposed to one another. Finally, it shows why and how some fundamental aspects of logical empiricism, particularly in its nonlinguistic form, are still valid today.