Presentation of "The Scientific Worldview: The Vienna Circle"

Abstract

It is often claimed that the philosophy of science emerged as a discipline with its own specificity, becoming professionalized in the interwar period, following the formation in the 1920s of what would officially be called the Vienna Circle starting in 1929, and its subsequent consolidation after the migration of leading Central European philosophers of science to the United States. Below, we publish a direct Spanish translation of the original German text through which the Vienna Circle entered public life: Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung. Der Wiener Kreis (Vienna: Artur Wolf Verlag, 1929). The circumstances of its drafting are explained in the preface—which we also reproduce—signed by Hans Hahn, Otto Neurath, and Rudolf Carnap on behalf of the Ernst Mach Association, founded in 1928 at the initiative of the Austrian Freethinkers' Union together with members of other like-minded circles, with the intention of "disseminating knowledge of the exact sciences." The text itself, however, is unsigned, although it is known to have been the result of a collective effort involving, in addition to the aforementioned authors (especially Neurath, who proposed the name "Wiener Kreis" ["Vienna Circle"] and produced the first version, while Carnap and Hahn collaborated with him in editing the text), apparently other members of the Circle (such as Herbert Feigl and Friedrich Waismann).

On the other hand, considering that the Vienna Circle was an informal group whose members came from diverse specialties and where differences and nuanced perspectives prevailed, and that their ideas evolved over time through constant exchange, criticism, and self-criticism, this programmatic text should be regarded as a provisional expression—in some respects, such as the centrality given to Carnap’s constitutional theory in the Aufbau—of the thought of some of its members, particularly those identified as the "left wing" of the Circle, including Hahn, Neurath, Carnap, and Philip Frank.

The work reproduced here is not a philosophical text in the strict sense, to be evaluated according to the standards of specialized philosophical publications. Rather, its goal was to convey the fundamental tenets of the scientific worldview to a broader, non-specialized audience. Thus, in style and structure, it more closely resembles the manifestos of artistic and literary avant-gardes, so common in the first half of the 20th century.