ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTIONMJL t J L o r i t z S c h l i c k was bom in Berlin on April 14, 1882. Having completed his elementary education and attended the Realgymnasium there, he went on to study physics at the Universities of Heidelberg, Lausanne, and Berlin. He received his doctorate of philosophy in 1904 for a thesis on physics written under the direction of Max Planck. By 1911 he had completed a second thesis, entitled “The Nature of Truth According to Modem Logic,” with which he qualified as a teacher at Rostock. In 1912 he was appointed to a teaching position in Kiel; ten years later he went to Vienna as professor of the philosophy of induc tive science, succeeding Boltzmann and Mach. In Vienna he gathered around him a group of philosophers, among whom were Rudolf Carnap, Otto Neurath, and Friedrich Waismann, and mathematicians and physicists, including Kurt Godel, Phillip Frank, Karl Menger, and Hans Hahn. This group regularly discussed topics of mutual interest and soon became known as the Vienna Circle. Certain traits character ized the general outlook of the group: an antimetaphysical attitude, a firm belief in the value of radical empiricism, a great faith in the methods of modem logic, and the conviction that the future of phi losophy lay in its becoming the logic of science. The group saw them selves as continuing and further developing the positivist tradition of Mach and Boltzmann, but it was certainly also deeply influenced by the ideas of Russell and the earlier thought of Wittgenstein. The groups views were made public by a special manifesto, Wissenschaftliche W eltauffassung: der W iener Kreis (1929); by a series of mono graphs the first of which appeared in 1929 under the general title Schriften zur W issenschaftlichen Weltauffassung; and later in the journal Erkenntnis. After establishing contact with several philoso phers of a similar general orientation they started an international movement which was to be known later as logical positivism. Schlick came to the United States in 1929 as a visiting professor at Stanford
University; he also taught at Berkeley in 1931. His death came in Vienna in 1936 when he was murdered on the steps of the university by a former student, apparently deranged.
