The author examines three fundamental concepts: existence, a priori knowledge, and value. These concepts have been recurrent concerns of western philosophy and also reveal important similarities and differences between the movements from which the author takes his departure.

A great mathematician and teacher, and a physicist and philosopher in his own right, bridges the gap between science and the humanities in this exposition of the philosophy of science. He traces the history of science from Aristotle to Einstein to illustrate philosophy's ongoing role in the scientific process. In this volume he explains modern technology's gradual erosion of the rapport between physical theories and philosophical systems, and offers suggestions for restoring the link between these related areas. This book is (...) suitable for undergraduate students and other readers. 1962 ed. Index. 36 figures. (shrink)

In _Time in the Ditch, _John McCumber explores the effect of McCarthyism on American philosophy in the 1940s and 1950s. The possibility that the political pressures of the McCarthy era might have skewed the development of the discipline has rarely been addressed in the subsequent half century. Why was silence maintained for so long? And what happens, McCumber asks, when political events and pressures go beyond interfering with individual careers to influence the nature of a discipline itself?

The issue “realism vs. phenomenalism” or “realism vs. positivism” has been widely discussed during the last fifty years. The issue has even become a political and social one in Lenin's Materialism and Empiriocricism, which is built entirely around this topic. He calls “positivism” bluntly a “reactionary philosophy” because it supposedly denies the reality of the world which is described by science. M. Schlick devoted to this issue the paper “Realism and Positivism” which was published recently with an introduction by D. (...) Rynin. It should, therefore, be welcomed, that Professor Feigl attacked this problem by the methods of modern semantics. This is an attempt to solve a question by precise logical argument which has been frequently treated in a way that provided more heat than light. It is certainly very desirable to scrutinize Feigl's argument carefully and to find out exactly its contribution to our conception of scientific method. (shrink)

In this rejoinder to the critical comments elicited by my essay “Existential Hypotheses,” I propose to deal first with the challenge coming from the avowedly different philosophical outlook of Professor Churchman. My other critics, Professors Frank, Hempel, Nagel and Ramsperger, on the whole, share my basic conception of the tasks of philosophy of science and epistemology, even if they dissent in one important respect or another from the special solution I suggested. But since I discern even in Professor Nagel's remarks (...) a pragmatist or instrumentalist strain akin to the major contentions of Professor Churchman, it will be well to begin with a defense and further clarification of my underlying point of view. Only after this restatement of my platform will I undertake to defend semantic realism against the specific criticisms advanced by the last four authors. (shrink)

The intention of the present essay is to urge a reconsideration of the Realism-Phenomenalism-Issue, mainly and primarily in regard to the interpretation of scientific hypotheses; secondarily also relating to the basic problems of epistemology.

This intriguing and ground-breaking book is the first in-depth study of the development of philosophy of science in the United States during the Cold War. It documents the political vitality of logical empiricism and Otto Neurath's Unity of Science Movement when these projects emigrated to the US in the 1930s and follows their de-politicization by a convergence of intellectual, cultural and political forces in the 1950s. Students of logical empiricism and the Vienna Circle treat these as strictly intellectual non-political projects. (...) In fact, the refugee philosophers of science were highly active politically and debated questions about values inside and outside science, as a result of which their philosophy of science was scrutinized politically both from within and without the profession, by such institutions as J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. It will prove absorbing reading to philosophers and historians of science, intellectual historians, and scholars of Cold War studies. (shrink)