William James and the Vienna circle

Massimo Ferrari

pp. 15-42

in: Friedrich Stadler, Niels Weidtmann, Sami Pihlström (eds), Logical empiricism and pragmatism, Berlin, Springer, 2017

Abstract

William James was welcomed in Vienna with much more interest and sympathy than in Germany. Ernst Mach knew James's work fairly well and they corresponded for many years. Thanks to the German translation of is book on Pragmatism provided by Wilhelm Jerusalem, within the "First Vienna Circle" James' work was read and appreciated during the first decade of the twentieth century. Philipp Frank, Otto Neurath, and Hans Hahn established a pragmatist tendency that would emerge more and more during the further development of Logical Empiricism, and that would eventually result in a convergence with James's conception of truth, method of knowledge, and more generally of philosophy of science.

Cited authors

Jerusalem Wilhelm

Mach Ernst

James William

Hahn Hans

Frank Philipp

Neurath Otto