The reception of German scientific philosophy in North America
1930–1962
pp. 193-204
in: Graham Solomon (ed), Witches, scientists, philosophers, Berlin, Springer, 2000Abstract
It is quite widely believed that something like a consensus in North American philosophy of science2 existed in the period roughly covering 1930 to 1960. I choose 1930 because it dates the beginning of publication of the journal Erkenntnis (edited initially by Reichenbach and Carnap), and opens a decade of something like editorial control over major work in philosophy of science and related fields. Think in this connection of the two series, "Schriften zur Wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung" (edited by Philipp Frank and Moritz Schlick), and "Einheitswissenshaft" (edited initially by Otto Neurath, Carnap, Frank, and Hans Hahn). The first of a number of major conferences in analytic philosophy of science was held in Paris in 1935. In 1938 the publication of the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science began, under the initiative of Neurath, with Carnap and Charles Morris as associate editors. I note with interest that the founding editor ofPhilosophy of Science, William Malisoff, was also a member of the Advisory Committee of the Encyclopedia. Philosophy of Science began publication in January 1934; the lead article, "On the Character of Philosophic Problems", is Malisoff' translation of Carnap's essay originally written in German. All of the developments just outlined took place within what we now regard as the discipline of analytic philosophy. The tool of philosophy is the new and more powerful logic of Russell and Whitehead, Frege, Boole and DeMorgan.
