Introduction

The philosophical movement called “logical empiricism”—sometimes also called “logical positivism” or “neopositivism”—is best conceived as characterized by a set of philosophical positions developed in the 1920s and 1930s by two groups, the Vienna Circle and the Berlin Group, importantly along with certain metaphilosophical ambitions. Comprehending the modern world meant comprehending modern science, and this required that philosophy itself become scientific. It had to stop the pursuit of individual system-building and become a collective endeavor, and it had to replace intuitions of deeper meanings with logical arguments open to inspection and informed criticism. Logical analysis with its verificationist bent and its anti-metaphysical consequences came to be regarded as the defining characteristic of logical empiricism. The Berlin Group was forced to disband already earlier under the pressure of the Nazi race laws and their immediate implementation in 1933.