ABSTRACT
There can be little doubt that analytical philosophy of science would not be what it is today had there not been the philosophical movement called “logical empiricism” (also called “logical positivism” or “neo-positivism”). Its most influential figures were Rudolf Carnap, Hans Reichenbach, Herbert Feigl, and C. G. Hempel, European émigrés who had developed their philosophies in the context of the vienna Circle and the Berlin Society for Scientific Philosophy. Though not entirely so (given the support they were given by pragmatists like Ernest Nagel and sympathetic critics like W. v. Quine and Wilfrid Sellars), it was largely under their aegis that around the middle of the twentieth century philosophy of science became a recognized sub-discipline in its own right with its distinct methodology. Notably, it was the logical empiricists’ formalist approach to philosophy, not their material concerns with science, that for a while even appeared to have set the agenda and standard for analytical philosophy as a whole. It is only in retrospect, and in step with the rediscovery of the great variety of doctrines promoted under its name, that the pragmatic and holistic elements in logical empiricism have been discerned that were introduced by Otto Neurath and Philipp Frank. After a period of wholesale rejection, logical empiricism has regained a measure of respect, as careful historical and philosophical studies have replaced hostile caricatures.
