Vienna Circle

This paper details how, besides his work on theoretical physics, Philipp Frank continued to remain interested in the philosophical questions of physics throughout his entire career. While this interest surfaced in different forms in different periods, Frank's late approach (developed mainly in the United States) constituted a sophisticated and complex inquiry into what he called the "humanistic background of science". Frank argued that we need to understand the physical (or scientific) endeavor as a whole. In this project, as it turned out, metaphysics could play a crucial role. Frank's American activities thus involved two core issues: (1) interpreting metaphysics in a way that would make it a meaningful enterprise for empiricists; and (2) investigating to what extent metaphysics, in this interpretation, can contribute to a better understanding of the natural sciences. Using the results of the latter, Frank tried to bridge the gap between the natural and social sciences.

In Der logische Aufbau der Welt, first published in 1928, Carnap aims to rationally reconstruct all objects of cognition by logico-definitional means. As a result, he intends to obtain a fully objective framework in which scientific discourse can take place. This is made possible by the novel method of ‘purely structural definite description’ of all scientifically relevant objects, which is first introduced in the Aufbau. Key to the attainment of this goal is the notion of ‘foundedness’, which Carnap presents as a new basic notion of logic, in order to establish a link between the purely conventional world of logical and mathematical knowledge and the empirical world of knowledge of scientific objects. This idea experienced major criticism by Friedman (1999a,b) since he considers it to lead to the demolition of the boundary between those two worlds. In this essay, we want to defend foundedness against Friedman’s critique by arguing that its introduction is necessary within Carnap’s logicist world of thought to deal with a more fundamental problem: the demarcation of the empirical parts of the Aufbau. In the last section, we will give an outlook on the actual cause for the failure of the Aufbau, the lack of a principle to determine the truth of the instances of the basic relation in the Aufbau, and we will show how this can contribute to the explanation of Carnap’s future philosophical development and retrospective self-evaluation. This essay serves as a dense informal sketch for a later extensive formal treatment of this reading of foundedness and focuses on its implications for the interpretation of Carnap’s post-Aufbau development.

I am planning a history of the notion of philosophical nonsense and naturally difficult historical and exegetical questions have come up.  Charles Pigden has argued that the notion goes back at least as far as Hobbes and that Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant (on some interpretations) and pragmatists such as William James, as well as numerous Twentieth-Century philosophers make use of it.  In this ‘paper’ I put forward for general discussion such questions as whether Hobbes was the first 'nonsensicalist', whether Kant was a 'nonsensicalist' at all, which philosophers if any have considered contradictions to be meaningless and whether Wittgenstein thought that his concept of criterion could legitimately be used verificationistically.  I shall continue to add further questions as they occur to me.

How do philosophical accusations of talking nonsense relate to the layperson’s notions of meaning and meaningfulness?  If one were to explain carefully what philosophical nonsense was supposed to be, would one be greeted with incredulity?  How do people react to being accused to talking nonsense themselves?  Is anything analogous to an illusion of meaning recognised in everyday life?  In dream-reports perhaps?  Or in the utterances of schizophrenics or those under the influence of drugs?  Or in certain jokes and hoaxes?  Are contradictions felt to be meaningless?  I argue that, though it is clear that experimental philosophy could shed some light on these questions, their subject matter creates special difficulties.  First, it is more difficult than usual to formulate questions and produce ‘vignettes’ that do not subtly encourage certain responses at the expense of others.  Second, the fact that philosophical nonsense is a metaphilosophical concept ensures that its investigation is going to be more indirect than would be that of knowledge or intention, for example.

This paper explains Wittgenstein’s understanding of the ‘grammar’ of our (or any) language, tracing its origins in the Tractatus’s concept of logical syntax, and then examining the senses in which Wittgenstein, in his later work, viewed grammar as being ‘arbitrary’. Then, armed with this understanding, it moves on to the task of examining how, within the framework of a Wittgensteinian view of language, we should understand the inescapable ‘compellingness’ of logical necessity – what Wittgenstein calls the “hardness of the logical must”. Whereas it is often thought that Wittgenstein’s views on the nature of the ‘grammar’ of our concepts leads him towards a vitiatingly conventionalist or anti‐realist understanding of necessity, in which its logical ‘superhardness’ becomes problematic, this paper will argue that there is actually no such tension in Wittgenstein’s thought. In fact an understanding of the ways in which our conceptual grammar is arbitrary casts a great deal of light on how it is that our concepts can nevertheless support a logically superhard, and normatively commanding, notion of necessity. In support of this view, I distinguish Wittgenstein’s views on necessity from the ‘classical’ conventionalism of the Vienna Circle, and from the radical conventionalism of Michael Dummett, and defend Wittgenstein's view from a powerful recent attack from Quassim Cassam.

Das Problem der Expertokratie (Herrschaft der Experten) wirkt zunächst unscheinbar gegenüber dem öffentlichkeitswirksameren Diskurs über ‚Populismus'. Bei näherem Hinsehen zeigt sich jedoch ein enger Zusammenhang, wenn es sich nicht gar um zwei komplementäre Phänomene handelt: Der Aufstieg des Populismus kann auch als Antwort auf die ungebremste Macht von Experten verstanden werden. Als politisches Problem hat Expertokratie eine lange Geschichte, die auf die Anfänge der griechischen politischen Philosophie zurückgeht. Das Thema der Macht von Experten ruft die grundsätzliche Frage nach dem Wissen von politischen Dingen auf und verweist auf die Krise des politischen Wissens. Auf diese Weise konfrontiert es uns mit tiefgreifenden Herausforderungen für die Demokratie im 21. Jahrhundert.

Thomas Nagel in ‘What is it like to be a bat?’ suggests that we don’t yet have much idea of how mental entities could be identical with physical ones (though he wisely stops short of accusing physicalists of not meaning ANYTHING WHATSOEVER by their identity-claims).  Colin McGinn goes further by suggesting that we may forever remain in this state of ignorance and incomprehension because of the inherent limitations of the human intellect.  I argue that the mere possibility that McGinn is right shows that it is over-hasty to conclude from philosophy’s failure to solve its problems that there must be something wrong with the problems themselves.  I also try to relate Nagel’s and McGinn’s view to David Stove’s response to philosophy’s apparent failure to make much progress.  He seems pessimistic about whether we will ever fully understand what is wrong with some philosophical claims.

Mémoire de master 1 de philosophie. Que recouvre l'expression de "conception scientifique du monde" (Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung) au sein du Cercle de Vienne et selon Otto Neurath en particulier ? Quelles en sont ses caractéristiques, son contexte d'élaboration et les conséquences de sa mise en pratique ?

Στο άρθρο που ακολουθεί γίνεται μια συγκριτική μελέτη των δύο βασικών πυλώνων της φιλοσοφίας της επιστήμης: του Λογικού Θετικισμού και της Διαψευσιοκρατίας, ως προσπάθειες της οριοθέτησης της επιστήμης από τη μεταφυσική. Παρουσιάζεται και εξετάζεται η διακήρυξη του Κύκλου της Βιέννης, ως της μίας εκ των δύο βασικών ερευνητικών ομάδων του Λογικού Θετικισμού και αναφέρονται οι αιτίες αποδόμησης του. Εξετάζεται η κριτική του Popper στον επαγωγισμό και η διαψευσιοκρατική προσέγγισή του και αναπτύσσονται παραδείγματα στις θεωρίες των Kepler, Newton, Αριστοτέλη και Γαλιλαίου ως προς το βαθμό διαψευσιμότητας και την συνεπάγουσα αξιολόγηση των θεωριών σύμφωνα με τα κριτήρια της διαψευσιοκρατίας.

Presenta la filosofía de la ciencia como el resultado de un proyecto que no se completó y que a través del siglo XX fue adquiriendo contenidos significativos pese a diferir del diseño inicial. Explicita los contenidos que resultaron más importantes

This paper looks at philosophical accusations of talking nonsense from the perspective of argumentation theory.  An accusation of this sort, when seriously meant, amounts to the claim that someone believes there is something she means by her utterance when in fact she means nothing whatsoever by it.  Such accusations may indeed be peculiar to philosophy.  They also involve the claim that there can be ILLUSIONS OF ARGUMENTATION, both inter- and intra-personal.  The problem of how one could possibly diagnose such illusions is raised and I suggest that, if there is a way, it will require a therapeutic rather than a polemical approach.  This suggestion is of course made by Wittgenstein and some of his followers but, in my view, it has remained undeveloped.  It often takes the form of a comparison with psychoanalysis.  I note that the more like psychoanalysis it becomes, the less like traditional argumentation, philosophical or otherwise, it will be.

This book is an introduction in a double sense. It is intended to introduce beginners in philosophy to the idea of philosophical nonsense and the problems it raises. But it is also addressed to professional philosophers, most of whom seem virtually unaware of the issue.

Certain philosophers, here called ‘nonsensicalists’, believe that much philosophy (philosophical questions as well as assertions) is simply nonsense in the strict sense of being meaningless. They proceed as though it were an established fact that there is such a thing as philosophical nonsense and the notion were quite unproblematic. By contrast, many other philosophers proceed as though either they had never heard of it or it were quite obvious that there is no such thing.

There can be little doubt that what the nonsensicalists are saying is of great importance – if they are right. But there are at least eight questions that must be addressed before anyone is in a position to start hunting down philosophical nonsense and they have all been woefully neglected.

The idea of philosophical nonsense goes back to Thomas Hobbes at least and yet its history remains largely unresearched.

In view of the neglect of the problems raised by the notion of philosophical nonsense, even by professional philosophers, it is not unduly optimistic to suggest that it is a topic to which relative newcomers to the subject might make a contribution.

Ludwig Wittgenstein thought that good philosophy unties the knots in our thinking that bad philosophy has put there and must make movements as complicated as the knots it unties. Is the notion of philosophical nonsense an essential aid to this – as Wittgenstein himself thought – or just another knot?

The theory of quantum mechanics has often been thought to show an affinity with logical empiricism: in both, observation plays a central role, and questions about what is unobservable are dismissed. However, there were also strong tensions between the logical empiricism of the Vienna Circle and certain implications drawn from quantum physics. In the 1920s and 1930s, many physicists thought that quantum mechanics revealed a limit to what could be known scientifically, and this opened the door to a wide range of speculations, in which quantum mechanics was connected with free will, organic life, psychology and religion – speculations in which many leading quantum physicists engaged. Members of the Vienna Circle, such as Frank and Schlick, looked at quantum mechanics for a confirmation of their empiricist views, but were at the same time critical about these wider implications drawn from quantum mechanics, which in their eyes were connected with broader mysticist and irrational trends in society. They engaged in particular with the views of Bohr and Jordan, both of whom expressed affinities with logical empiricism while at the same time arguing for claims which proved hard to reconcile with the scientific world conception of the  Vienna Circle.

This dissertation is a historical study of influential currents in the philosophy of language and linguistics of the first half of the twentieth century, explored from the perspective of the English scholar C. K. Ogden (1889–1957). Although no ‘Great Man’ in his own right, Ogden had a personal connection, reflected in his work, to several of the most significant figures of the age. The background to the ideas espoused in Ogden’s book The Meaning of Meaning, co-authored with I.A. Richards (1893–1979), is examined in detail, along with the application of these ideas in his international language project Basic English. A richly interlaced network of connections is revealed between early analytic philosophy, semiotics and linguistics, all inevitably shaped by the contemporary cultural and political environment. In particular, significant interaction is shown between Ogden’s ideas, the varying versions of ‘logical atomism’ of Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) and Ludwig Wittgensten (1889–1951), Victoria Lady Welby’s (1837–1912) ‘significs’, and the philosophy and political activism of Otto Neurath (1882–1945) and Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970) of the Vienna Circle. Amid these interactions emerges a previously little known mutual exchange between the academic philosophy and linguistics of the period and the practically oriented efforts of the international language movement. In exploring these connections, novel light is shed on the intellectual history of a period crucial in the development of both linguistics and philosophy.

A. J. Ayer's Language, Truth, and Logic had been responsible for introducing the Vienna Circle's ideas, developed within a Germanophone framework, to an Anglophone readership. Inevitably, this migration from one context to another resulted in the alteration of some of the concepts being transmitted. Such alterations have served to facilitate a number of false impressions of Logical Empiricism from which recent scholarship still tries to recover. In this paper, I will attempt to point to the ways in which LTL has helped to foster the various mistaken stereotypes about Logical Empiricism which were combined into the received view. I will begin by examining Ayer's all too brief presentation of an Anglocentric lineage for his ideas. This lineage, as we shall see, simply omits the major 19 th century Germanophone influences on the rise of analytic philosophy. The Germanophone ideas he presents are selectively introduced into an Anglophone context, and directed towards various concerns that arose within that context. I will focus on the differences between Carnap's version of the overcoming of metaphysics, and Ayer's reconfiguration into what he calls the elimination of metaphysics. Having discussed the above, I will very briefly outline the consequences that Ayer's radicalisation of the Vienna Circle's doctrines had on the subsequent Anglophone reception of Logical Empiricism.

This article examines the political ideas of Otto Neurath (1882−1945), a major figure of the Vienna Circle. As it seeks to demonstrate, even the most technical aspects of Neurath's philosophical work-the philosophy of language, the argument in favor of visual language, and the theory of protocol statements-must be read as parts of a new political religion. The political religion of the Vienna Circle was meant to erase all traces of religion and tradition. In particular, it was devised to replace Judaism, which most members stemmed from: It induced the Jews to give up their traditions and habits and become members of a rational world society led by technological planning experts. The following analyses trace Neurath's political ideas from a remote expert opinion on the Jewish colonization of Palestine to his late political treatise on expertocracy and democracy, and proceed to some of the expert writings on science, philosophy, and language from there. Neurath spoke the language of democratization, but his own authoritarian inclinations came shining through. Ultimately, he advocated for expertocratic rule in the language of democratic empowerment.

Twentieth-century philosophy has often been pictured as divided into two camps, analytic and continental. This study challenges this depiction by examining encounters between some of the leading representatives of either side. Starting with Husserl and Frege's fin-de-siècle turn against psychologism, it turns to Carnap's 1931 attack on Heidegger's metaphysics (together with its background in the Cassirer-Heidegger dispute of 1929), moving on to Ayer's 1951 meeting with Bataille and Merleau-Ponty at a Parisian bar, followed by the 'dialogue of the deaf' between Oxford linguistic philosophers and phenomenologists at the 1951 Royaumont colloquium, leading up to the Derrida-Searle controversy. Careful study shows that it is implausible to assume the existence of a century-old 'gulf' between two sides of philosophy. Vrahimis argues that miscommunication and ignorance over the exact content of the above encounters must to a large extent be held accountable for any perceived gap.

La scelta di procedere in uno studio su Hayek e il suo concetto di libertà, e più in generale sulla libertà liberale, è stata dettata dall’esigenza, sempre più preminente dal basso della società civile ma non dall’alto della politica che la governa, sia di una riflessione profonda sul rapporto che intercorre fra la libertà dei singoli individui e quella della collettività di cui essi fanno parte, sia una riflessione su uno stato che legifera troppo e incide sulle libertà individuali o al contrario non legiferando affatto produce dei vuoti normativi che non possono essere colmati con la creatività teorica e etica dei singoli.

Friedrich Nietzsche was among the figures from the history of nineteenth century philosophy that, perhaps surprisingly, some of the Vienna Circle's members had presented as one of their predecessors. While, primarily for political reasons, most Anglophone figures in the history of analytic philosophy had taken a dim view of Nietzsche, the Vienna Circle's leader Moritz Schlick admired and praised Nietzsche, rejecting what he saw as a misinterpretation of Nietzsche as a militarist or proto-fascist. Schlick, Frank, Neurath, and Carnap were in different ways committed to the view that Nietzsche made a significant contribution to the overcoming of metaphysics. Some of these philosophers praised the intimate connection Nietzsche drew between his philosophical outlook and empirical studies in psychology and physiology. In his 1912 lectures on Nietzsche, Schlick maintained that Nietzsche overcame an initial Schopenhauerian metaphysical-artistic phase in his thinking, and subsequently remained a positivist until his last writings. Frank and Neurath made the weaker claim that Nietzsche contributed to the development of a positivistic or scientific conception of the world. Schlick and Frank took a further step in seeing the mature Nietzsche as an Enlightenment thinker.

In the summer of 1932, Wittgenstein alleged that a recently published paper of Carnap's, "Physicalistic Language as the Universal Language of Science" made extensive and unacknowledged use of Wittgenstein's own ideas.  In a letter to Schlick he complained that he would "soon be in a situation where my own work shall be considered merely as a reheated version or plagiarism of Carnap’s."  In this paper, I look at the relationship between Carnap’s paper, subsequently reprinted as The Unity of Science, and Wittgenstein’s discussion of related topics in the first seven chapters of the Philosophical Remarks and other writing from 1929-1932.

This paper is intended as a contribution to the current debates about the relationship between politics and the philosophy of science in the Vienna Circle.
I re-consider this issue by shifting the focus from philosophy of science as theory to philosophy of science as practice. From this perspective I take as a starting point the Vienna Circle’s scientific world conception and emphasize its practical nature: I re-interpret its tenets as a set of recommendations which express the particular epistemological attitude in which both the Vienna Circle’s (doing) philosophy of science and its political engagement were rooted.
Regarding politics, I reconstruct, referring to new primary sources, how the scientific world-conception placed the Vienna Circle within a neoliberal-socialist political network which pursued concrete political aims.
In light of my reconstruction I shall argue that neither the Vienna Circle’s alleged ethical non-cognitivism nor its alleged adhesion to the Weberian ideal of a value-free science rule out the possibility of ascribing to the Vienna Circle a politically engaged philosophy of science: the case of the Vienna Circle shows how philosophy of science, as a public activity, can itself become a form of political engagement, even without necessarily entailing a theory of objective values.

The history of early analytic philosophy, and especially the work of the logical empiricists, has often been seen as involving antagonisms with rival schools. Though recent scholarship has interrogated the Vienna Circle’s relations with e.g. phenomenology and Neo-Kantianism, important works by some of its leading members are involved in responding to the rising tide of Lebensphilosophie. This paper will explore Carnap’s configuration of the relation between Lebensphilosophie and the overcoming of metaphysics, Schlick’s responses to Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, and Neurath’s reaction against Spengler.

The aim of this paper is consider the context and possible influences on Rudolf Carnap’s Principle of Tolerance (PoT). My thesis is the following: One can acknowledge the important influence of Hans Hahn, Karl Menger and Otto Neurath (i.e. the left wing of the Vienna Circle) along with Moritz Schlick and Friedrich Waismann (i.e. the right wing of the Vienna Circle) and try to place the PoT in the context of Carnap’s immediate allies and opponents. But one can and actually have to locate it in a broader context, namely in the philosophy of logic of Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein. As is it less known, Russell introduced a certain pragmatic freedom into the considerations of logic but to obtain Carnap’s PoT we have to extend the boundaries of Russell’s freedom. To do this, Carnap accepted the idea of Wittgenstein, namely that logic is devoid of empirical content. Since logic is tautological (which Russell denied) we have the relevant freedom which resulted in the PoT. Hence Carnap’s writings about logic and philosophy in the 1930s could be seen and reconstructed as a(n either intended or unintended) syntheses or special combination of Russell’s inductive and pragmatical considerations on logic and Wittgenstein’s idea of an empty logic.

There are passages in Wittgenstein where he compares his method to psychotherapy and one or two where he seems to suggest that the ‘patient’ has the last word on his ‘illness’ and ‘cure’.  This paper tries to take these seriously, especially in connexion with the idea that victims of philosophical confusion talk nonsense.

Philosophical accusations of talking nonsense made in a polemical spirit are bound to fail, since the only way one can effectively criticise another’s utterance is by attaching some meaning to it.  But if the other acknowledges the possibility that his puzzlement arises from his having been taken in by nonsense, then perhaps a co-operative investigation of this suggestion might be fruitful.  Indeed self-diagnosis ought in principle to be possible.  Ought it not to have happened at least once in the history of philosophy if philosophical nonsense has ever been exposed? 

But there are difficulties.  For example:
a) We must ask whether or not philosophical nonsense, when exposed as such, is supposed to lose all appearance of meaningfulness.  Either answer is problematic.
b) The acknowledged similarity of the methodology under investigation to that of psychoanalysis exposes it to many of the familiar objections to the methodology of psychoanalysis, especially those that draw attention to the misleading influence of suggestion by an authority-figure.
c) The proposal that relentless cross-questioning of a suspected nonsense-talker will eventually lead her to ‘dry up’ (if she really is talking nonsense) seems to involve a version of the so-called Socratic Fallacy.

1. 原文题目原文： How I See Philosophy
译文原著者 Friedrich Waismann, 国别：奥地利
本文作者简介：弗里德里希·魏斯曼(Friedrich Waismann 1896–1959) ，奥地利数学家，哲学家，牛津大学哲学系教师。他曾是“维也纳学派”重要代表人物，曾做过石里克的私人秘书，同时他也是维特根斯坦哲学过渡时期（中期维特根斯坦）最直接最重要的见证人，曾被誉为中期维特根斯坦哲学的“发言人”, 曾与维特根斯坦密切合作并参与维特根斯坦与维也纳小组成员的不定期讨论。他的哲学深受维特根斯坦影响，后执教于牛津大学。主要著作包括《数学思维导论》（Introduction to Mathematical Thinking),《语言哲学原理》（The Principles of Linguistic Philosophy) 。其中《语言哲学原理》是他与维特根斯坦共同合作的成果。由于国内目前没有任何有关他的研究，也没有相关的中文译本，所以暂且翻译这两本著作的书名。
2. 内容提要：
本文主要探讨了哲学的本质，方法和目的。首先，哲学不是科学。科学尝试从实验的角度来对世界进行阐释。而哲学的本质是是要让我们对某个问题，概念获得深刻的洞察。传统哲学所尝试构建理论体系，提供某种公理或者证明某个理论的工作应该寿终正寝。取而代之的是以非教条主义的态度来做哲学。其次，哲学的方法在于对我们借以探讨哲学问题的语词进行深刻的分析，不断发掘出这些哲学问题本身所具有的意义。对语词的使用的分析主要是为了展示出主题，从而对整体获得某种概览。逻辑宿命论是站不住脚的，我们必须放弃排中律，加入三值逻辑。哲学问题不是被解决的，而是被消解的。哲学家的工作就是只做描述，而不做解释。最后，哲学的目的是为了缓解人类理智的痉挛，逃脱语言形式的控制，从而转变我们的心智图景。哲学与语法有密切关联，对语法的分析就是为了获得某种全面的“视野”。
关键词：概念分析，非教条主义，描述，视野，哲学语法
3. 文章出处：
本文原载于 Contemporary British Philosophy, III, edited by H.D. Lewis, London 1956年,第447-490页。
后来载于魏斯曼文集How I See Philosophy, By F Waismann, edited by R.Harre, Macmillan 1968年
第一章I How I See Philosophy 第1-38页。本译文是参照R. Haree版本翻译出来的。
基金项目：国家建设高水平大学公派研究生项目，留金发[2014] 3026号
4. 译者联系方式：
工作单位：武汉大学哲学学院，加拿大维多利亚大学哲学系

I originally entitled this paper ‘Why are there no uncontroversial examples of philosophical nonsense?’, but since this seemed apt to provoke rather superficial responses, I decided to re-title it.  In it I ponder the fact that, not only are there no uncontroversial examples of philosophical nonsense, there are no uncontroversial examples of what one might call ‘analogue philosophical nonsense’.  These would be non-philosophical cases of someone’s believing he means something when in reality he means nothing.  (Someone’s saying, ‘It’s 5 o’clock on the sun’ is sometimes offered as an example.)  I ask what conditions such cases would need to satisfy.  What would count as a compellingly clear case of an illusion of meaning?  Why has no one described one?

Este artículo se propone analizar los acontecimientos más relevantes de la historia de la Biología que le dieron corpus teórico y sustento científico, enfatizando el papel que cumplió la teoría de evolución de Lamarck y de Darwin en este proceso; y recopilar algunas de las problemáticas actuales asociadas con la enseñanza y el aprendizaje de la teoría de la evolución por selección natural. Inicialmente, los estudios sobre la vida recibieron fuertes críticas por una corriente de pensamiento originada en el Círculo de Viena en la segunda década del siglo
pasado y que tuvo a la Física como modelo de ciencia. Según ésta, se promulgaba la existencia de un único método y explicación para los fenómenos naturales y sociales, reduciendo todo sistema a sus partes constituyentes. Los
puntos de confrontación con la Biología se centraron en la escasez de leyes, la inutilización de la matemática en sus
clasificaciones, y en la imposibilidad de falsar muchas de sus hipótesis, fundamentalmente las históricas. Con el tiempo, las nuevas corrientes de pensamiento en la Filosofía de las  Ciencias reconocieron a la Biología por sus características distintivas y objetos de estudio propios, de complejidad irreductible y con un irrefutable espacio de acción para el azar y la probabilidad. A tal efecto, tanto Lamarck como Darwin realizaron significativos aportes al ofrecer una visión de la vida en transformación permanente. Sin embargo, fue la teoría de la evolución por selección natural de Darwin la que produjo una revolución científica al dar al mundo una explicación laica al origen de las especies. En el ámbito educativo, existen en la actualidad distintas dificultades para la enseñanza y el aprendizaje de la evolución, entre las que se destaca la presencia de numerosas concepciones alternativas a la postura científica tanto en docentes como en alumnos y manuales escolares. Se discuten las implicancias de la Biología y de la evolución por selección natural tanto en el campo científico como en el de la educación en ciencias.

This article aims to analyze the most important events in the history of Biology that gave its theoretical corpus and scientific status, emphasizing the role that Lamarck and Darwin’s theory of evolution fulfilled in this process, and to review some of the current issues associated with the teaching and learning of the theory of evolution by natural selection. Initially, the studies of life received a strong criticism by a school of thought originated in the Vienna Circle in the second decade of the last century and which placed Physics at the top of the scientific activities.
According to this, the existence of a single method and explanation of natural and social phenomena was promulgated, reducing any system to its constituent parts. Controversies about Biology focused on the paucity of laws, the lack of mathematics in their classifications and the impossibility to falsify many of their hypotheses, primarily the historical ones. Over time, the new currents of thought in the Philosophy of Science recognized the absence of a unique method and language of science. Then, Biology was recognized for its distinctive features and study objects, with these having an irreducible complexity, and an irrefutable place for action for chance and probability. For this purpose, Lamarck and Darwin made significant contributions, offering a vision of life in
permanent transformation. However, it was the theory of evolution by natural selection proposed by Darwin which
generated a scientific revolution, giving the world a secular explanation to the origin of the species. Currently, in the
field of education there are different challenges for teaching and learning evolution, including the presence of numerous misconceptions, to the scientific view, in teachers, pupils and textbooks. The implications of Biology and evolution by natural selection both in science and in the science education are discussed.

This chapter serves as an introduction to the content and context of A.J. Ayer's Language, Truth and Logic. It argues that Ayer's book did more than just misrepresent some of the theses of the Vienna Circle, but on the contrary, provided fresh insights into some of the debates among its members. While the influence of Ayer's book is undeniable, this chapter invites readers to reevaluate their knowledge about Ayer's work by reexamining his place and role in the history of analytic philosophy.

.Taking as my starting-point Cora Diamond’s paper ‘What nonsense might be’, I extend her ‘austere’ conception of nonsense to encompass the talking of nonsense.  We need to focus on the utterer as well as the utterance.  This brings out how difficult it is going to be to DIAGNOSE the talking of (philosophical) nonsense, without falling into the ‘sense that is senseless’ trap (PI, I, 500).  It is not clear to what extent Diamond sees the problem here.  I suggest that if there is a way round the difficulty, it will involve adopting a therapeutic approach.

In this dissertation I present a genealogy of scientific explanation, which in contemporary philosophy of science is almost universally taken to be a central aim of science. Today, philosophers of science constantly reason with and about this aim of science. Through my genealogy I show that this particular way to reason about science should not be taken for granted. It does not constitute a transparent aspect of science that is given to us. Instead it contingently emerged within a period of intellectual migration.

Dieser Aufsatz, der einen Vortrag zum Moritz Schlick-Symposion im November 2015 nachzeichnet, gewährt einen kurzen Einblick in den philosophischen Werdegang des Wiener Kreises, der noch zu Beginn Bertrand Russells Ideen positiv aufnimmt, während er mit stärker werdenden Einfluss Wittgensteins mehr und mehr Kritik an ihm ausübt. Die hier besprochenen Beispiele der Russellschen Logik und der Vagheit sind bisher noch nicht veröffentlichten Zirkelprotokollen entnommen.