Editing Vienna Circle (section)

==History ==
The history and development of the Vienna Circle shows various stages:<ref>Cp. the phases in Stadler 2001. See 579–580 for an overview.</ref>

=== First Vienna Circle (1907–1912) ===
The pre-history of the Vienna Circle began with meetings on the [[philosophy of science]] and [[epistemology]] from 1908<ref>Wittgenstein's Vienna, New Edition, Elephant Paperback, 1996.</ref> on, promoted by [[Philipp Frank]], [[Hans Hahn (mathematician)|Hans Hahn]] and [[Otto Neurath]].<ref>Cp. Frank 1949, Stadler 2001, Uebel 2000. The expression goes back to Rudolf Haller, "Der erste Wiener Kreis", in: ''Fragen zu Wittgenstein und Aufsätze zur Österreichischen Philosophie'', Amsterdam 1986.</ref>

[[Hans Hahn (mathematician)|Hans Hahn]], the oldest of the three (1879–1934), was a mathematician. He received his degree in [[mathematics]] in 1902. Afterwards he studied under the direction of [[Ludwig Boltzmann]] in Vienna and [[David Hilbert]], [[Felix Klein]] and [[Hermann Minkowski]] in [[University of Göttingen|Göttingen]]. In 1905 he received the [[Habilitation]] in mathematics. He taught at [[Innsbruck]] (1905–1906) and [[Vienna]] (from 1909).

[[Otto Neurath]] (1882–1945) studied [[mathematics]], [[political economy]], and [[history]] in Vienna and Berlin. From 1907 to 1914 he taught in Vienna at the [[Neue Wiener Handelsakademie]] (Viennese Commercial Academy). Neurath married Olga, Hahn's sister, in 1911.

[[Philipp Frank]], the youngest of the group (1884–1966), studied [[physics]] at Göttingen and Vienna with Ludwig Boltzmann, David Hilbert and Felix Klein. From 1912, he held the chair of [[theoretical physics]] in the [[German University in Prague]].

Their meetings were held in Viennese coffeehouses from 1907 onward. Frank remembered:

{{quotation|After 1910 there began in Vienna a movement which regarded Mach's [[positivist]] philosophy of science as having great importance for general intellectual life [...] An attempt was made by a group of young men to retain the most essential points of Mach's positivism, especially his stand against the misuse of [[metaphysics]] in science. [...] To this group belonged the mathematician H. Hahn, the political economist Otto Neurath, and the author of this book [i.e. Frank], at the time an instructor in [[theoretical physics]] in Vienna. [...] We tried to supplement Mach's ideas by those of the French philosophy of science of [[Henri Poincaré]] and [[Pierre Duhem]], and also to connect them with the investigations in [[logic]] of such authors as [[Louis Couturat|Couturat]], [[Ernst Schröder (mathematician)|Schröder]], Hilbert, etc.|Uebel, Thomas, 2003, p. 70.}}

A number of further authors were discussed in the meetings such as [[Franz Brentano]], [[Alexius Meinong]], [[Hermann von Helmholtz]], [[Heinrich Hertz]], [[Edmund Husserl]], [[Sigmund Freud]], [[Bertrand Russell]], [[Alfred North Whitehead]], [[Vladimir Lenin]] and [[Gottlob Frege]].<ref>Cp. Stadler 2001, 143–161.</ref>

Presumably the meetings stopped in 1912, when Frank went to [[Prague]], to hold the chair of theoretical physics left vacant by [[Albert Einstein]]. Hahn left Vienna during [[World War I]] and returned in 1921.

=== Formative years (1918–1924) ===
The formation of ''the'' Vienna Circle began with Hahn returning to Vienna in 1921.<ref>Stadler 2001, 195–218.</ref> Together with the mathematician [[Kurt Reidemeister]] he organized seminars on [[Ludwig Wittgenstein]]'s ''[[Tractatus logico-philosophicus]]'' and on Whitehead and Russell's ''[[Principia Mathematica]]''.

With the support of Hahn, [[Moritz Schlick]] was appointed to the chair of philosophy of the inductive sciences at the University of Vienna in 1922 – the chair formerly held by [[Ernst Mach]] and partly by [[Boltzmann]]. Schlick had already published two important works ''Raum und Zeit in die gegenwärtigen Physik'' (''Space and Time in contemporary Physics'') in 1917 and ''Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre'' (''General Theory of Knowledge'') in 1918.

Immediately after Schlick's arrival in Vienna, he organized discussions with the mathematicians around Hahn. In 1924 Schlick's students [[Friedrich Waismann]] and [[Herbert Feigl]] suggested to their teacher a sort of regular "evening circle". From winter term 1924 on regular meetings were held at the Institute of Mathematics in Vienna's Boltzmanngasse 5 on personal invitation by Schlick. These discussions can be seen as the beginning of the Vienna Circle.<ref>Stadler 2001, 199.</ref>

=== Non-public phase – Schlick Circle (1924–1928) ===
The group that met from 1924 on was quite diverse and included not only recognized scientists such as Schlick, Hahn, Kraft, Philipp Frank, Neurath, [[Olga Hahn-Neurath]], and [[Heinrich Gomperz]], but also younger students and doctoral candidates.<ref>Stadler 2001, 199–218.</ref> In addition, the group invited foreign visitors.
 
In 1926 Schlick and Hahn arranged to bring [[Rudolf Carnap]] to the University of Vienna as a ''Privatdozent'' (private lecturer). Carnap's ''Logical Structure of the World'' was intensely discussed in the Circle.

Also Wittgenstein's ''Tractatus logico-philosophicus'' was read out loud and discussed. From 1927 on personal meetings were arranged between Wittgenstein and Schlick, Waismann, Carnap and Feigl.<ref>For the recording of these meetings see {{Cite book |url=https://archive.org/details/wittgensteinvien0000wais_c8b9 |title=Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle: Conversations Recorded by Friedrich Waismann |publisher=[[Barnes & Noble Books]] |others=translation by Joachim Schulte and Brian McGuinness |year=1979 |editor-last=McGuinness |editor-first=Brian |editor-link=Brian McGuinness |location=New York |url-access=registration}} </ref>

=== Public phase – Schlick Circle and ''Verein Ernst Mach'' (1928–1934) ===
In 1928 the ''Verein Ernst Mach'' (''Ernst Mach Society'') was founded, with Schlick as its chairman.<ref>Stadler 2001, 219–290.</ref> The aim of the society was the spreading of a "scientific world conception" through public lectures that were in large part held by members of the Vienna Circle.<ref>For an overview of the lectures of the ''Ernst Mach Society'' 1929–1932 see Stadler 2001, 342–344.</ref>

In 1929 the Vienna Circle made its first public appearance under this name – invented by Neurath<ref>Frank 1949, 38.</ref> – with the publication of its manifesto ''Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung. Der Wiener Kreis'' (''The Scientific Conception of the World. The Vienna Circle'' also known as ''Viewing the World Scientifically: The Vienna Circle''<ref name="Edmunds, D 2001, page 151">Edmunds, D. and Eidenow, J. ''Wittgenstein's Poker: The Story of a Ten-Minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers,'' 2001, page 151.</ref>) The pamphlet is dedicated to Schlick, and its preface was signed by Hahn, Neurath and Carnap.

The manifesto was presented at the ''Tagung für Erkenntnislehre der exakten Wissenschaften'' (''Conference on the Epistemology of the Exact Sciences'') in autumn 1929, organized by the Vienna Circle together with the [[Berlin Circle]]. This conference was the first international appearance of [[logical empiricism]] and the first of a number of conferences: [[Königsberg]] ([[Second Conference on the Epistemology of the Exact Sciences|1930]]), [[Prague]] (1934), [[Paris]] (1935), [[Copenhague]] (1936), [[Cambridge]], UK (1938), [[Cambridge, Mass.]] (1939), and [[Chicago]] (1941).

While primarily known for its views on the natural sciences and metaphysics, the public phase of the Vienna Circle was explicitly political. Neurath and Hahn were both [[socialism|socialists]] and believed the rejection of magic was a necessary component for liberation of the working classes. The manifesto linked [[Karl Marx]] and [[Friedrich Nietzsche]] to their political and anti-metaphysical views, indicating a blur between what are now considered two separate schools of contemporary philosophy – [[analytic philosophy]] and [[continental philosophy]].<ref>{{Cite book | last = Josephson-Storm | first = Jason | title = The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences | location = Chicago | publisher = University of Chicago Press | date = 2017 |pages = 246–7 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=xZ5yDgAAQBAJ | isbn = 978-0-226-40336-6 }}</ref>

In 1930 the Vienna Circle and the Berlin Society took over the journal ''Annalen der Philosophie'' and made it the main journal of logical empiricism under the title ''[[Erkenntnis]]'', edited by Carnap and Reichenbach. In addition, the Vienna Circle published a number of book series: ''Schriften zur wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung'' (''Monographs on the Scientific World-Conception'', ed. by Schlick und Frank, 1928–1937),<ref>In 1934 Karl Popper's ''Logic of Scientific Discovery'' was published in this series.</ref> ''Einheitswissenschaft'' (''Unified Science'', edited by Neurath, 1933–1939), and later the ''[[International Encyclopedia of Unified Science]]'' (edited by Neurath, Carnap and [[Charles W. Morris]], 1938–1970).

=== Disintegration, emigration, internationalization (1934–1938) ===
From the beginning of the 1930s the first signs of disintegration appeared for political and [[racist]] reasons: [[Herbert Feigl]] left Austria in 1930. Carnap was appointed to a chair at [[Prague University]] in 1931 and left for Chicago in 1935.

1934 marks an important break: Hahn died after surgery, Neurath fled to Holland because of the victory of [[Austrofascism]] in the [[Austrian Civil War]] following which the ''Ernst Mach Society'' was dissolved for political reasons by the [[Schuschnigg]] regime.

The murder of Moritz Schlick by the former student [[Hans Nelböck]] for political and personal reasons in 1936 set an end to the meetings of the Schlick Circle.<ref>For documents concerning the murder of Moritz Schlick and the trial against Nelböck see Stadler 2001, 869–909.</ref>

Some members of the circle such as Kraft, Waismann, Zilsel, Menger and Gomperz continued to meet occasionally. But the [[annexation of Austria]] to [[Nazi Germany]] in 1938 meant the definite end of the activities of the Vienna Circle in Austria.<ref>Only after the war in 1949 arose the ''[[Kraft Circle]]'' in Vienna, a successor to the Vienna Circle, under the leadership of Viktor Kraft, a former member of the Vienna Circle. Among the members of this circle was [[Paul Feyerabend]].</ref>

With the emigration went along the internationalization of [[logical empiricism]]. Many former members of the Vienna Circle and the [[Berlin Circle]] emigrated to the [[English-speaking world]] where they had an immense influence on the development of [[philosophy of science]]. The [[unity of science]] movement for the construction of an ''International Encyclopedia of Unified Science'', promoted mainly by Neurath, Carnap, and Morris, is symptomatic of the internationalization of logical empiricism, organizing numerous international conferences and the publication of the ''International Encyclopedia of Unified Science''.<ref>For a chronology of the emigration of the Vienna Circle see Hans-Joachim Dahms, "The Emigration of the Vienna Circle", in: Friedrich Stadler, Peter Weibel (ed.), ''The Cultural Exodus from Austria'', Vienna 1995.</ref>

=== Overview of the members ===
Apart from the central figures of the Schlick Circle the question of membership in the Vienna Circle is in many cases unsettled. The partition into "members" and "those sympathetic to the Vienna Circle" produced in the manifesto from 1929 is representative only of a specific moment in the development of the Circle.<ref>Stöltzner and Uebel 2006, XX.</ref> Depending on the criteria used (regular attendance, philosophical affinities etc.) there are different possible distributions in "inner circle" and "periphery".

In the following list (in alphabetical order), the "inner circle" is defined using the criterion of regular attendance. The "periphery" comprises occasional visitors, foreign visitors and leading intellectual figures who stood in regular contact with the Circle (such as Wittgenstein and Popper).<ref>Cp. Stadler 2001, 573. This list follows the presentation in Stadler 2001, 571ff., including further bio-bibliographical information on all the persons listed.</ref>

'''Inner Circle:''' [[Gustav Bergmann]], [[Rudolf Carnap]], [[Herbert Feigl]], [[Philipp Frank]], [[Kurt Gödel]], [[Hans Hahn (mathematician)|Hans Hahn]], [[Olga Hahn-Neurath]], [[Béla Juhos]], [[Felix Kaufmann]], [[Victor Kraft]], [[Karl Menger]], [[Richard von Mises]], [[Otto Neurath]], [[Rose Rand]], [[Josef Schächter]], [[Moritz Schlick]], [[Friedrich Waismann]], [[Edgar Zilsel]].

'''Periphery:''' [[Alfred Jules Ayer]], [[Egon Brunswik]], [[Karl Bühler]], [[Josef Frank (architect)|Josef Frank]], [[Else Frenkel-Brunswik]], [[Heinrich Gomperz]], [[Carl Gustav Hempel]], [[Eino Kaila]], [[Hans Kelsen]], [[Charles W. Morris]], [[Arne Næss|Arne Naess]], [[Karl Raimund Popper]], [[Willard Van Orman Quine]], [[Frank P. Ramsey]], [[Hans Reichenbach]], [[Kurt Reidemeister]], [[Alfred Tarski]], [[Olga Taussky-Todd]], [[Ludwig Wittgenstein]].

===Reception in the United States and the United Kingdom===
The spread of [[logical positivism]] in the United States occurred throughout the 1920s and 1930s. In 1929 and in 1932, Schlick was a visiting professor at [[Stanford University|Stanford]], while Feigl, who immigrated to the United States in 1930, became lecturer (1931) and professor (1933) at the [[University of Iowa]]. The definite diffusion of logical positivism in the United States was due to Carl Hempel, Hans Reichenbach, Rudolf Carnap, Philipp Frank, and Herbert Feigl, who emigrated and taught in the United States.<ref>E. Nagel, "Nature and Convention" in: ''The Journal of Philosophy'', 26, 1929, in which Nagel discussed Reichenbach's interpretation of the theory of relativity;</ref><ref>S. Hook, "Personal Impression of Contemporary German Philosophy" in: ''The Journal of Philosophy'', 27, 1930, in which Hook presented a favorable report on logical positivism;</ref><ref>A. E. Blumberg and H. Feigl, "Logical Positivism: A New Movement in European Philosophy" in: ''The Journal of Philosophy'', 28, 1931.</ref>

Another link to the United States is [[Willard Van Orman Quine]], who traveled in 1932 and 1933 as a Sheldon Traveling Fellow to [[Vienna]], [[Prague]], and [[Warsaw]]. Moreover, American [[semiotician]] and philosopher [[Charles W. Morris]] helped many German and Austrian philosophers emigrate to the United States, including Rudolf Carnap, in 1936.

In the United Kingdom it was [[Alfred Jules Ayer]] who acquainted the British academia with the work of the Vienna Circle with his book ''[[Language, Truth, and Logic]]'' (1936). [[Karl Popper]] was also important for the reception and critique of their work, even though he never participated in the meetings of the Vienna Circle.