Logical Positivism

Historical Origins

Although its history can arguably be traced as far back as classical Greece, logical positivism formally originated in the 1920s in Austria and Germany. Among its founding leaders were Rudolf Carnap, Moritz Schlick (founder of the Vienna Circle), Hans Reichenbach (founder of the Berlin Circle), Carl Hempel, Otto Neurath, Victor Kraft, Kurt Grelling, Philipp Frank, and Herbert Feigl. While the early logical positivists combined the logical concepts of Ernst Mach with the ideas of Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege and the British philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell, they were also inspired by Ludwig Wittgenstein's notion that philosophy's role was to provide a logical clarification of thought. As such, metaphysical speculation, that is, knowledge not grounded in logic and empirical evidence (such as religion), is automatically deemed unscientific. The growth of logical positivism in the United States came about during the 1930s. Many of the scholars behind the movement in Europe immigrated to the United States, where their ideas were well received. For example, in the late 1930s, Feigl, Frank, Carnap, and Hempel relocated to the University of Iowa, Harvard University, the University of Chicago, and the City College of New York, respectively.

Tenets of Positivism

Positivism differs from logical positivism in that the former originated from Auguste Comte during the period from 1798 to 1857 and aims to distinguish science from both metaphysics and religion. The two terms, however, are often used interchangeably. Logical positivism distinguishes mathematics and logic, and the analytical statements that can be formed from them, from empiricism. Positivism, more so than logical positivism, can be based on empirically accessible experiences of the world. Logical positivists hold that scientific knowledge does not rise solely from experience (i.e., positivism differs from empiricism). Logical positivists privileged mathematics in scientific decision making as the surest way to analyze data. Logical positivism recognizes only two types of scientific reasoning. The first is based on statements that can be verified empirically (a posteriori). The second is based on analytical statements of logic and mathematics that are deemed to be true or false by their mere definition and deduction (a priori).

Logical positivism encompasses two important concepts dealing with the structure of scientific theories: the differences between observational and theoretical statements (where truth is the correspondence between them) and between synthetic and analytical statements. These differences are used to explain deductive reasoning in scientific theorizing.

Positivists attempt to construct universal laws of explanation based on generalizations of empirical [Page 1801]patterns. For example, if Consumer A lives closer to a mall than Consumer B, then he or she is more likely to shop at that mall than Consumer B. Similarly, people tend to migrate more frequently over shorter distances than over longer ones. Because distance imposes costs on consumers and migrants, they collectively will tend to travel less frequently the farther away they live. From such observations, distance decay becomes an observed “law” of consumer and migrant behavior. All these notions combine to create “a Truth,” as opposed to “one truth” among many.

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