Scientific Realism in the Empiricist Tradition

Abstract Contemporary empiricism owes a significant debt to the logical empiricists Carnap, Hempel, and Reichenbach. Their contribution deserves careful consideration. All three were born in Germany, and each attended several major German universities. Although they began their work in philosophy at a time when metaphysics was rampant, they studied with some of the greatest mathematicians and scientists of that time. They had both deep knowledge and profound appreciation of the substantive content of mathematics and empirical science. They helped to lay the foundation and to erect the superstructure of what we can now recognize in retrospect as twentieth-century scientific philosophy. This movement grew chiefly out of the logical positivism of the Vienna Circle (with which Rudolf Carnap was mainly associated) and the logical empiricism of the Berlin Group (with which Hans Reichenbach was connected). Carl Hempel worked closely with both groups. What all had in common was a devotion to the aims and methods of empirical science and an appreciation of the techniques of mathematical logic. By midcentury virtually every important figure in the movement had relinquished some of the more extreme views of early logical positivism, abandoned the designation of “logical positivist,” and adopted “logical empiricism” as the name of their movement. After that, logical positivism no longer existed.