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79-506: Thomas Samuel Kuhn ( / k uː n / ; July 18, 1922 – June 17, 1996) was an American historian and philosopher of science whose 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was influential in both academic and popular circles, introducing the term paradigm shift , which has since become an English-language idiom. Kuhn made several claims concerning the progress of scientific knowledge : that scientific fields undergo periodic "paradigm shifts" rather than solely progressing in

158-616: A tautological character, that is its statements are analytical statements , thus very different from Kantian synthetic statements. The only two kinds of statements accepted by the Vienna Circle are synthetic statements a posteriori (i.e., scientific statements) and analytic statements a priori (i.e., logical and mathematical statements). However, the persistence of metaphysics is connected not only with logical mistakes but also with "social and economical struggles". Metaphysics and theology are allied to traditional social forms, while

237-412: A Kuhnian!", referring to the relativism that some philosophers have developed based on his work. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is the single most widely cited book in the social sciences. The enormous impact of Kuhn's work can be measured in the changes it brought about in the vocabulary of the philosophy of science: besides "paradigm shift", Kuhn popularized the word paradigm itself from

316-403: A consequence, a scientific revolution is not defined as a "change of paradigm" anymore, but rather as a change in the taxonomic structure of the theoretical language of science. Some scholars describe this change as resulting from a 'linguistic turn'. In their book, Andersen, Barker and Chen use some recent theories in cognitive psychology to vindicate Kuhn's mature philosophy. Apart from dropping

395-656: A linear and continuous way, and that these paradigm shifts open up new approaches to understanding what scientists would never have considered valid before; and that the notion of scientific truth, at any given moment, cannot be established solely by objective criteria but is defined by a consensus of a scientific community . Competing paradigms are frequently incommensurable ; that is, they are competing and irreconcilable accounts of reality. Thus, our comprehension of science can never rely wholly upon "objectivity" alone. Science must account for subjective perspectives as well, since all objective conclusions are ultimately founded upon

474-427: A scientist undertakes in the laboratory are not "the given" of experience but rather "the collected with difficulty." They are not what the scientist sees—at least not before his research is well advanced and his attention focused. Rather, they are concrete indices to the content of more elementary perceptions, and as such they are selected for the close scrutiny of normal research only because they promise opportunity for

553-517: A single scientific revolution in the late Renaissance. The frequent use of the phrase "paradigm shift" has made scientists more aware of and in many cases more receptive to paradigm changes, so that Kuhn's analysis of the evolution of scientific views has by itself influenced that evolution. Kuhn's work has been extensively used in social science; for instance, in the post-positivist / positivist debate within International Relations . Kuhn

632-468: A story, about particulars of the past. [...] The philosopher, on the other hand, aims principally at explicit generalizations and at those with universal scope. He is no teller of stories, true or false. His goal is to discover and state what is true at all times and places rather than to impart understanding of what occurred at a particular time and place." More recent work questions whether these methodological and conceptual divisions are in fact barriers to

711-428: A term used in certain forms of linguistics and the work of Georg Lichtenberg to its current broader meaning, coined the term " normal science " to refer to the relatively routine, day-to-day work of scientists working within a paradigm, and was largely responsible for the use of the term " scientific revolutions " in the plural, taking place at widely different periods of time and in different disciplines, as opposed to

790-562: A unified discipline. Vienna Circle The Vienna Circle ( German : Wiener Kreis ) of logical empiricism was a group of elite philosophers and scientists drawn from the natural and social sciences , logic and mathematics who met regularly from 1924 to 1936 at the University of Vienna , chaired by Moritz Schlick . The Vienna Circle had a profound influence on 20th-century philosophy , especially philosophy of science and analytic philosophy . The philosophical position of

869-411: Is "the notion that thinking can either lead to knowledge out of its own resources without using any empirical material, or at least arrive at new contents by an inference from given states of affair". Synthetic knowledge a priori is rejected by the Vienna Circle. Mathematics, which at a first sight seems an example of necessarily valid synthetic knowledge derived from pure reason alone, has instead

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948-480: Is awarded by the American Chemical Society to speakers who present original views that are at odds with mainstream scientific understanding. The winner is selected based on the novelty of the viewpoint and its potential impact if it were to be widely accepted. Thomas Kuhn was married twice, first to Kathryn Muhs with whom he had three children, then to Jehane Barton Burns (Jehane B. Kuhn). In 1994, Kuhn

1027-751: Is because would-be scientists' worldviews are changed through rigorous training, through the engagement between what Kuhn calls 'exemplars' and the Global Paradigm. Kuhn's notions of paradigms and paradigm shifts have been influential in understanding the history of economic thought, for example the Keynesian revolution , and in debates in political science. A defense Kuhn gives against the objection that his account of science from The Structure of Scientific Revolutions results in relativism can be found in an essay by Kuhn called "Objectivity, Value Judgment, and Theory Choice." In this essay, he reiterates five criteria from

1106-468: Is credited as a foundational force behind the post- Mertonian sociology of scientific knowledge . Kuhn's work has also been used in the Arts and Humanities, such as by Matthew Edward Harris to distinguish between scientific and historical communities (such as political or religious groups): 'political-religious beliefs and opinions are not epistemologically the same as those pertaining to scientific theories'. This

1185-434: Is fundamentally irrational : if rival theories cannot be directly compared, then one cannot make a rational choice as to which one is better. Whether Kuhn's views had such relativistic consequences is the subject of much debate; Kuhn himself denied the accusation of relativism in the third edition of SSR , and sought to clarify his views to avoid further misinterpretation. Freeman Dyson has quoted Kuhn as saying "I am not

1264-475: 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. 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),

1343-553: Is not mutation, as I thought for many years, but speciation. And the problems presented by speciation (e.g., the difficulty in identifying an episode of speciation until some time after it has occurred, and the impossibility even then, of dating the time of its occurrence) are very similar to those presented by revolutionary change and by the emergence and individuation of new scientific specialties. Some philosophers claim that Kuhn attempted to describe different kinds of scientific change: revolutions and specialty-creation. Others claim that

1422-511: Is termed revolutionary science . The difference between the normal and revolutionary science soon sparked the Kuhn-Popper debate . In SSR , Kuhn also argues that rival paradigms are incommensurable —that is, it is not possible to understand one paradigm through the conceptual framework and terminology of another rival paradigm. For many critics, for example David Stove ( Popper and After , 1982), this thesis seemed to entail that theory choice

1501-431: Is the method of clarification of philosophical problems; it makes an extensive use of symbolic logic and distinguishes the Vienna Circle empiricism from earlier versions. The task of philosophy lies in the clarification—through the method of logical analysis—of problems and assertions. Logical analysis shows that there are two different kinds of statements; one kind includes statements reducible to simpler statements about

1580-517: The International Encyclopedia of Unified Science (edited by Neurath, Carnap and Charles W. Morris , 1938–1970). From the beginning of the 1930s 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

1659-478: The International Encyclopedia of Unified Science , published by the logical positivists of the Vienna Circle . In this book, heavily influenced by the fundamental work of Ludwik Fleck (on the possible influence of Fleck on Kuhn see), Kuhn argued that science does not progress via a linear accumulation of new knowledge, but undergoes periodic revolutions, also called " paradigm shifts " (although he did not coin

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1738-404: The International Encyclopedia of Unified Science : The Vienna Circle cannot be assigned one single philosophy. First, there existed a plurality of philosophical positions within the Circle, and second, members often changed their views fundamentally in the course of time and in reaction to discussions in the Circle. It thus seems more convenient to speak of "the philosophies (in the plural) of

1817-600: The annexation of Austria to Nazi Germany in 1938 meant the definite end of the activities of the Vienna Circle in Austria. 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

1896-609: The completeness of first-order logic and the incompleteness of formal arithmetic . Another very interesting congress was the one held in Copenhagen (1936), which was dedicated to quantum physics and causality . Between 1928 and 1937, the Vienna Circle published ten books in a collection named Schriften zur wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung ( Monographs on the Scientific World-Conception ), edited by Schlick and Frank. Karl Raimund Popper 's book Logik der Forschung

1975-448: The truth about unobservable things and whether scientific reasoning can be justified at all. In addition to these general questions about science as a whole, philosophers of science consider problems that apply to particular sciences (such as astronomy , biology , chemistry , Earth science , or physics ). Some philosophers of science also use contemporary results in science to reach conclusions about philosophy itself. One origin of

2054-999: 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). Inner Circle: Gustav Bergmann , Rudolf Carnap , Herbert Feigl , Philipp Frank , Kurt Gödel , 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 , Else Frenkel-Brunswik , Heinrich Gomperz , Carl Gustav Hempel , Eino Kaila , Hans Kelsen , Charles W. Morris , Arne Naess , Karl Raimund Popper , Willard Van Orman Quine , Frank P. Ramsey , Hans Reichenbach , Kurt Reidemeister , Alfred Tarski , Olga Taussky-Todd , Ludwig Wittgenstein . The spread of logical positivism in

2133-475: 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. The Vienna Circle was very active in advertising their new philosophical ideas. Several congresses on epistemology and philosophy of science were organized, with

2212-497: 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 Couturat , Schröder , Hilbert, etc. A number of further authors were discussed in the meetings such as Brentano , Meinong , Helmholtz , Hertz , Husserl , Freud , Russell , Whitehead , Lenin and Frege . Presumably the meetings stopped in 1912, when Frank went to Prague , to hold

2291-564: The M. Taylor Pyne Professor of Philosophy and History of Science. He served as the president of the History of Science Society from 1969 to 1970. In 1979 he joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Philosophy, remaining there until 1991. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions ( SSR ) was originally printed as an article in

2370-499: The United States occurred throughout the 1920s and 1930s. In 1929 and in 1932, Schlick was a visiting professor at 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

2449-486: The United States. 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

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2528-551: 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), Einheitswissenschaft ( Unified Science , edited by Neurath, 1933–1939), and later

2607-439: The Vienna Circle in Austria. The history and development of the Vienna Circle shows various stages: The pre-history of the Vienna Circle began with meetings on the philosophy of science and epistemology from 1908 on, promoted by Philipp Frank , Hans Hahn and Otto Neurath . Hans Hahn , the oldest of the three (1879–1934), was a mathematician. He received his degree in mathematics in 1902. Afterwards he studied under

2686-464: The Vienna Circle was called logical empiricism (German: logischer Empirismus ), logical positivism or neopositivism . It was influenced by Ernst Mach , David Hilbert , French conventionalism ( Henri Poincaré and Pierre Duhem ), Gottlob Frege , Bertrand Russell , Ludwig Wittgenstein and Albert Einstein . The Vienna Circle was pluralistic and committed to the ideals of the Enlightenment . It

2765-424: The Vienna Circle". However, some central topics and debates can be identified. This states the scientific world-conception of the Vienna Circle, which is characterized "essentially by two features. First it is empiricist and positivist: there is knowledge only from experience. Second, the scientific world-conception is marked by the application of a certain method, namely logical analysis ." Logical analysis

2844-583: The Vienna Circle. In 1929 the Vienna Circle made its first public appearance under this name – invented by Neurath – 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 ) The pamphlet is dedicated to Schlick, and its preface was signed by Hahn, Neurath and Carnap. The manifesto

2923-548: 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. In 1928 the Verein Ernst Mach ( Ernst Mach Society ) was founded, with Schlick as its chairman. 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

3002-412: The chair of theoretical physics left vacant by Albert Einstein . Hahn left Vienna during World War I and returned in 1921. The formation of the Vienna Circle began with Hahn returning to Vienna in 1921. 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

3081-423: The concept of a paradigm and began to focus on the semantic aspects of scientific theories. In particular, Kuhn focuses on the taxonomic structure of scientific kind terms. In SSR he had dealt extensively with "meaning-changes". Later he spoke more of "terms of reference", providing each of them with a taxonomy . And even the changes that have to do with incommensurability were interpreted as taxonomic changes. As

3160-587: The concept of a paradigm, Kuhn also began to look at the process of scientific specialisation. In a scientific revolution, a new paradigm (or a new taxonomy) replaces the old one; by contrast, specialisation leads to a proliferation of new specialties and disciplines. This attention to the proliferation of specialties would make Kuhn's model less 'revolutionary' and more "evolutionary". [R]evolutions, which produce new divisions between fields in scientific development, are much like episodes of speciation in biological evolution. The biological parallel to revolutionary change

3239-536: 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 . Apart from the central figures of the Schlick Circle the question of membership in the Vienna Circle

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3318-475: The criteria still are not "objective" in the usual sense of the word because individual scientists reach different conclusions with the same criteria due to valuing one criterion over another or even adding additional criteria for selfish or other subjective reasons. Kuhn then goes on to say, "I am suggesting, of course, that the criteria of choice with which I began function not as rules, which determine choice, but as values, which influence it." Because Kuhn utilizes

3397-741: The direction of Ludwig Boltzmann in Vienna and David Hilbert , Felix Klein and Hermann Minkowski in 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 ,

3476-413: The empirically given; the other kind includes statements which cannot be reduced to statements about experience and thus they are devoid of meaning. Metaphysical statements belong to this second kind and therefore they are meaningless. Hence many philosophical problems are rejected as pseudo-problems which arise from logical mistakes, while others are re-interpreted as empirical statements and thus become

3555-502: The fruitful elaboration of an accepted paradigm. Far more clearly than the immediate experience from which they in part derive, operations and measurements are paradigm-determined. Science does not deal in all possible laboratory manipulations. Instead, it selects those relevant to the juxtaposition of a paradigm with the immediate experience that that paradigm has partially determined. As a result, scientists with different paradigms engage in different concrete laboratory manipulations. During

3634-442: The group of people who "faces modern times, rejects these views and takes its stand on the ground of empirical sciences". Thus the struggle between metaphysics and scientific world-conception is not only a struggle between different kinds of philosophies, but it is also—and perhaps primarily—a struggle between different political, social, and economical attitudes. Of course, as the manifesto itself acknowledged, "not every adherent of

3713-516: The help of the Berlin Circle . There were some preparatory congresses: Prague (1929), Königsberg (1930), Prague (1934) and then the first congress on scientific philosophy held in Paris (1935), followed by congresses in Copenhagen (1936), Paris (1937), Cambridge , UK (1938), Cambridge, Massachusetts . (1939). The Königsberg congress (1930) was very important, for Kurt Gödel announced that he had proven

3792-647: The history department only, Kuhn was offended at the philosophers' rejection because "I sure as hell wanted to be there, and it was my philosophy students who were working with me, not on philosophy but on history, were nevertheless my more important students". This attitude is also reflected in his historicist approach, as outlined in Kuhn's seminal Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962, 2nd ed. 1970), wherein philosophical questions about scientific theories and, especially, theory change are understood in historical terms, employing concepts such as paradigm shift . However, Kuhn

3871-465: The history of science in his account of science, his criteria or values for theory choice are often understood as descriptive normative rules (or more properly, values) of theory choice for the scientific community rather than prescriptive normative rules in the usual sense of the word "criteria", although there are many varied interpretations of Kuhn's account of science. Years after the publication of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Kuhn dropped

3950-466: 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. The group that met from 1924 on

4029-512: The natural sciences and metaphysics, the public phase of the Vienna Circle was explicitly political. Neurath and Hahn were both 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 . In 1930

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4108-424: The paradigm, normal science is extremely productive: "when the paradigm is successful, the profession will have solved problems that its members could scarcely have imagined and would never have undertaken without commitment to the paradigm". In regard to experimentation and collection of data with a view toward solving problems through the commitment to a paradigm, Kuhn states: The operations and measurements that

4187-463: The penultimate chapter of SSR that determine (or help determine, more properly) theory choice: He then goes on to show how, although these criteria admittedly determine theory choice, they are imprecise in practice and relative to individual scientists. According to Kuhn, "When scientists must choose between competing theories, two men fully committed to the same list of criteria for choice may nevertheless reach different conclusions." For this reason,

4266-399: The period of normal science, the failure of a result to conform to the paradigm is seen not as refuting the paradigm, but as the mistake of the researcher, contra Karl Popper 's falsifiability criterion. As anomalous results build up, science reaches a crisis , at which point a new paradigm, which subsumes the old results along with the anomalous results into one framework, is accepted. This

4345-399: The phrase, he did contribute to its increase in popularity), in which the nature of scientific inquiry within a particular field is abruptly transformed. In general, science is broken up into three distinct stages. Prescience, which lacks a central paradigm, comes first. This is followed by " normal science ", when scientists attempt to enlarge the central paradigm by "puzzle-solving". Guided by

4424-509: The process of specialisation is in itself a special case of scientific revolutions. It is also possible to argue that, in Kuhn's model, science evolves through revolutions. Although they used different terminologies, both Kuhn and Michael Polanyi believed that scientists' subjective experiences made science a relativized discipline. Polanyi lectured on this topic for decades before Kuhn published The Structure of Scientific Revolutions . Supporters of Polanyi charged Kuhn with plagiarism, as it

4503-464: The publication of various book series – Schriften zur wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung ( Monographs on the Scientific World-Conception ), Einheitswissenschaft ( Unified Science ) and the journal Erkenntnis – and the organization of international conferences in Prague ; Königsberg (today known as Kaliningrad ); Paris ; Copenhagen ; Cambridge , UK, and Cambridge, Massachusetts . Its public profile

4582-437: The relationship between science and truth. Philosophy of science focuses on metaphysical, epistemic and semantic aspects of science. Ethical issues such as bioethics and scientific misconduct are often considered ethics or science studies rather than philosophy of science. There is no consensus among philosophers about many of the central problems concerned with the philosophy of science, including whether science can reveal

4661-455: The scientific world-conception will be a fighter". Many historians of the Vienna Circle see in the latter sentence an implicit reference to a contrast between the so-called 'left wing' of the Vienna Circle, mainly represented by Neurath and Carnap, and Moritz Schlick. The aim of the left wing was to facilitate the penetration of the scientific world-conception in "the forms of personal and public life, in education , upbringing, architecture , and

4740-538: The small town of Croton-on-Hudson, New York where, once again, he attended a private progressive school – Hessian Hills School . It was here that, in sixth through ninth grade, he learned to love mathematics. He left Hessian Hills in 1937. He graduated from The Taft School in Watertown, Connecticut, in 1940. He obtained his BSc degree in physics from Harvard College in 1943, where he also obtained MSc and PhD degrees in physics in 1946 and 1949, respectively, under

4819-458: The subject of scientific inquiries. One source of the logical mistakes that are at the origins of metaphysics is the ambiguity of natural language . "Ordinary language for instance uses the same part of speech , the substantive, for things ('apple') as well as for qualities ('hardness'), relations ('friendship'), and processes ('sleep'); therefore it misleads one into a thing-like conception of functional concepts ". Another source of mistakes

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4898-563: The subjective conditioning/worldview of its researchers and participants. Kuhn was born in Cincinnati , Ohio , in 1922 to Minette Stroock Kuhn and Samuel L. Kuhn, an industrial engineer, both Jewish . From kindergarten through fifth grade, he was educated at Lincoln School, a private progressive school in Manhattan, which stressed independent thinking rather than learning facts and subjects. The family then moved 40 mi (64 km) north to

4977-523: The suggestion of university president James Conant . After leaving Harvard, Kuhn taught at the University of California, Berkeley , in both the philosophy department and the history department, being named Professor of the history of science in 1961. Kuhn interviewed and tape recorded Danish physicist Niels Bohr the day before Bohr's death. At Berkeley, he wrote and published (in 1962) his best known and most influential work: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions . In 1964, he joined Princeton University as

5056-413: The supervision of John Van Vleck . As he states in the first few pages of the preface to the second edition of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , his three years of total academic freedom as a Harvard Junior Fellow were crucial in allowing him to switch from physics to the history and philosophy of science . Kuhn taught a course in the history of science at Harvard from 1948 until 1956, at

5135-560: 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

5214-626: The two collections edited by the Vienna Circle. Schriften zur wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung ( Monographs on the Scientific World-Conception ), edited by Schlick and Frank: Einheitswissenschaft ( Unified Science ), edited by Carnap, Frank, Hahn, Neurath, Jørgensen (after Hahn's death), Morris (from 1938): These works are translated in Unified Science: The Vienna Circle Monograph Series Originally Edited by Otto Neurath , Kluwer, 1987. Monographs, arranged in chronological order, published in

5293-399: The unified discipline is the historical approach to the discipline of the philosophy of science. This hybrid approach is reflected in the career of Thomas Kuhn . His first permanent appointment, at the University of California, Berkeley , was to a position advertised by the philosophy department, but he also taught courses from the history department. When he was promoted to full professor in

5372-616: 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. Some members of the circle such as Kraft, Waismann, Zilsel, Menger and Gomperz continued to meet occasionally. But

5451-650: 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: 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

5530-400: Was also critical of attempts fully to unify the methods of history and philosophy of science: "Subversion is not, I think, too strong a term for the likely result of an attempt to make the two fields into one. They differ in a number of their central constitutive characteristics, of which the most general and apparent is their goals. The final product of most historical research is a narrative,

5609-469: Was diagnosed with lung cancer. He died in 1996. History and philosophy of science Philosophy of science is a branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods , and implications of science . The central questions of this study concern what qualifies as science, the reliability of scientific theories , and the ultimate purpose of science. This discipline overlaps with metaphysics/ ontology and epistemology , for example, when it explores

5688-513: Was known that Kuhn attended several of Polanyi's lectures, and that the two men had debated endlessly over epistemology before either had achieved fame. After the charge of plagiarism, Kuhn acknowledged Polanyi in the Second edition of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions . Despite this intellectual alliance, Polanyi's work was constantly interpreted by others within the framework of Kuhn's paradigm shifts, much to Polanyi's (and Kuhn's) dismay. Kuhn

5767-411: 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

5846-767: Was named a Guggenheim Fellow in 1954, elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1963, elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1974, elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1979, and, in 1982 was awarded the George Sarton Medal by the History of Science Society . He also received numerous honorary doctorates. In honor of his legacy, the Thomas Kuhn Paradigm Shift Award

5925-687: 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 ( 1930 ), Prague (1934), Paris (1935), Copenhague (1936), Cambridge , UK (1938), Cambridge, Mass. (1939), and Chicago (1941). While primarily known for its views on

6004-491: Was provided by the Ernst Mach Society (German: Verein Ernst Mach ) through which members of the Vienna Circle sought to popularize their ideas in the context of programmes for popular education in Vienna. During the era of Austrofascism and after the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany most members of the Vienna Circle were forced to emigrate. The murder of Schlick in 1936 by former student Johann Nelböck put an end to

6083-400: Was published in this collection. Seven works were published in another collection, called Einheitswissenschaft ( Unified Science ). In 1930 Rudolf Carnap and Hans Reichenbach undertook the editorship of the journal Erkenntnis , which was published between 1930 and 1940 (from 1939 the editors were Otto Neurath, Rudolf Carnap and Charles Morris). The following is the list of works published in

6162-421: 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. 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

6241-424: Was unified by the aim of making philosophy scientific with the help of modern logic . Main topics were foundational debates in the natural and social sciences, logic and mathematics; the modernization of empiricism by modern logic; the search for an empiricist criterion of meaning; the critique of metaphysics and the unification of the sciences in the unity of science . The Vienna Circle appeared in public with

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