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How the Cold War Transformed Philosophy of Science: To the Icy Slopes of Logic

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Most students of twentieth century philosophy are familiar with the story of the Vienna Circle, that movement of philosophically minded scientists and scientifically minded philosophers that created the philosophy known as logical positivism in central Europe following WW I. Many of its leading figures like Rudolf Carnap, Otto Neurath, Herbert Feigl and so on, are still remembered today and their writings are still read by analytical philosophers. And most students of twentieth century philosophy tend to think of this movement has having been devoted to a highly technical philosophy centering around modern logic and the philosophy of science. What most people don't remember about this movement is that in its origins at least, while its concerns did indeed center around developments in modern logic and the philosophy of science, they were by no means limited to those subjects. This should be evident to anyone who has ever read the manifesto of the Vienna Circle - "The Scientific Conception of the World: The Vienna Circle" which was authored by two of its leading figures - Otto Neurath and Rudolf Carnap. In this manifesto, Neurath and Carnap made it clear that their concerns extended beyond logic and science to encompass all aspects of society and culture including the arts, education, and politics. They made clear their connections with and commitment to socialism, and they even cited Karl Marx as one of the thinkers to which they looked up to. Neurath as an avowed Marxist, even went so far as to declare that in the future, the proletariat would become "the bearer of science without metaphysics."

Yet most people who are familiar with the logical empiricists think of their movement as having been highly apolitical or they may embrace the image of them that has been handed down to us by the Frankfurt School (i.e. Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse) who portrayed the logical empiricists as having been rather bloodless technocrats who were at least tacitly conservative. How did a philosophical movement which had emerged within the social democratic culture of "red" Vienna, come to develop such an image? Well, George Reisch in his lucidly written, *How the Cold War Transformed Philosophy of Science*, gives us at least a part of the answer. In this book, Reisch explores the reception of logical empiricism in the United States, with a special concentration on the fate of the Unity of Science movement which was founded by Neurath and which was continued, after his death, by the philosopher and physicist, Philipp Frank. As Reisch describes it, the Unity of Science movement was committed to demonstrating the fundamental unity of the sciences including the natural sciences, the behavioral sciences and the social sciences, and the Unity of Science movement was interested in using social science to explore how economic, political and cultural factors have shaped the development of science. As Reisch points out, the Unity of Science movement drew upon Marxist ideas while eschewing the dogmatism of dialectical materialism, which it dismissed as metaphysics. Its leading figures like Neurath and Frank were democratic socialists who were committed to using the methods of science to help create a fairer, more just society. But in the end, it seems that instead of transforming American society, the Unity of Science movement withered and died, and logical empiricism, itself, became shriveled in its concerns, abandoning its former political commitments in the name of scientific neutrality. George Reisch believes that the witchhunting climate of the McCarthy period of the 1950s had more than a little to do with this transformation, and he documents the extent to which people like Carnap and Frank were subjected to FBI surveillence and harassment while becoming isolated within the academy as it embraced the dogmas of cold war anticommunism.

All readers who are interested in the history of logical positivism, in twentieth century philosophy, or in the history of the American academy during the McCarthy period should find this well written book to be of great interest.