2024/02/26 by Sander Verhaegh · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Mathematics · Psychology · #Academic and Historical Perspectives in Psychology #History and Theory of Mathematics #Philosophy, Science, and History
paper · doi:10.1086/728796
openalex publication_date 2024/02/26 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
Logical positivism is often characterized as a set of naive doctrines on meaning, method, and metaphysics. In recent decades, however, historians have dismissed this view as a gross misinterpretation. This new scholarship raises a number of questions. When did the standard reading emerge? Why did it become so popular? And how could commentators have been so wrong? This essay reconstructs the history of a “caricature” and rejects the hypothesis that it was developed by ill-informed Anglophone scholars who failed to appreciate the subtleties of European scientific philosophy. It argues that the received view has a more complicated history and was frequently promoted by the European positivists themselves. The essay shows that the view has roots in both American and European scientific philosophy and emerged as a result of the complex interplay between the two communities in the years before the intellectual migration.