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Exact Thinking in Demented Times: The Vienna Circle and the Epic Quest for the Foundations of Science
A dazzling group biography of the early twentieth-century thinkers who transformed the way the world thought about math and science
Inspired by Albert Einstein's theory of relativity and Bertrand Russell and David Hilbert's pursuit of the fundamental rules of mathematics, some of the most brilliant minds of the generation came together in post-World War I Vienna to present the latest theories in mathematics, science, and philosophy and to build a strong foundation for scientific investigation. Composed of such luminaries as Kurt Gödel and Rudolf Carnap, and stimulated by the works of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper, the Vienna Circle left an indelible mark on science.
Exact Thinking in Demented Times tells the often outrageous, sometimes tragic, and never boring stories of the men who transformed scientific thought. A revealing work of history, this landmark book pays tribute to those who dared to reinvent knowledge from the ground up.
Inspired by Albert Einstein's theory of relativity and Bertrand Russell and David Hilbert's pursuit of the fundamental rules of mathematics, some of the most brilliant minds of the generation came together in post-World War I Vienna to present the latest theories in mathematics, science, and philosophy and to build a strong foundation for scientific investigation. Composed of such luminaries as Kurt Gödel and Rudolf Carnap, and stimulated by the works of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper, the Vienna Circle left an indelible mark on science.
Exact Thinking in Demented Times tells the often outrageous, sometimes tragic, and never boring stories of the men who transformed scientific thought. A revealing work of history, this landmark book pays tribute to those who dared to reinvent knowledge from the ground up.
480 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 79 reviews
March 15, 2019
I don't understand all the high reviews here. As another reviewer stated, if you want a book that goes into detail about logical positivism, this isn't it. While I didn't hate it (there were great descriptions of Einstein and his work, for instance), the heart of the book about the Vienna Circle reads like a melodramatic soap opera. I don't really care that so-and-so didn't get along with so-and-so ever since such-and-such happened, and revisions to ___ document were slow and frustrated everyone. Or that so-and-so was considered the center of the group, or that everyone contributed to ___ document but didn't really support it.
Did any of what I just described tell you anything about the novel advances in logic or philosophy of science? No. It reads like the melodramatic politics from any academic department in a university anywhere. And most importantly, the substance of the works are glossed over. Example: Wittgenstein's work is the heart of the group. They all adored it, even though he wasn't a central member. The book goes over his history with Russell and how he surpassed Russell. How everyone everywhere realized how brilliant he was and how brilliant his work was. What about his work was so brilliant exactly? That's apparently not so important to this book...only what people thought of him.
You can get some good anecdotes from it, but overall I wouldn't recommend this book.
Did any of what I just described tell you anything about the novel advances in logic or philosophy of science? No. It reads like the melodramatic politics from any academic department in a university anywhere. And most importantly, the substance of the works are glossed over. Example: Wittgenstein's work is the heart of the group. They all adored it, even though he wasn't a central member. The book goes over his history with Russell and how he surpassed Russell. How everyone everywhere realized how brilliant he was and how brilliant his work was. What about his work was so brilliant exactly? That's apparently not so important to this book...only what people thought of him.
You can get some good anecdotes from it, but overall I wouldn't recommend this book.
March 23, 2021
I am mildly surprised by several low ratings and reviews here, and it seems like the reviewers came expecting a history of logical positivism but did not exactly find that here. This is true, if I were to compare to other books which elicited a similar reaction for similar reasons, I daresay ‘Lords of Finance: Bankers who Broke the World’ fits the bill perfectly. Just as that book, this one is pretty much a ‘group biography’ of the chief actors related to the founding, propagation and ultimately demise of a set of ideas and practices in the early 1900s. You find the likes of well-known names – Hilbert, Russell, Wittgenstein, Einstein, Popper, Kafka, Freud, Godel, Pauli, etc. engaging with each other as intellectuals and, I daresay somewhat disappointingly, as individuals and humans. (Wittgenstein especially comes out as a … bit of a dickwad, for lack of a better term). The politics of the era is also reflected in the text, sometimes fluidly interwoven as a subtext and at other times completely explicit, making this book a wholesome read.
Once you’re done with this text though, it is hard to escape a nagging feeling of disappointment with our present times – not only does there not seem to be a similar set of groundbreaking polymaths, there also seems to be much less public engagement of ideas carried out in good faith. The ‘sparring of ideas’ popularized by the media, or social media in our age feels like a rotten joke comparatively.
Overall, I found this to be an excellent book – one written by a subject matter expert in a lucid style with the general audience in mind. Refreshing, and very hard to put down. Rating: 5 of 5 stars.
Once you’re done with this text though, it is hard to escape a nagging feeling of disappointment with our present times – not only does there not seem to be a similar set of groundbreaking polymaths, there also seems to be much less public engagement of ideas carried out in good faith. The ‘sparring of ideas’ popularized by the media, or social media in our age feels like a rotten joke comparatively.
Overall, I found this to be an excellent book – one written by a subject matter expert in a lucid style with the general audience in mind. Refreshing, and very hard to put down. Rating: 5 of 5 stars.
June 12, 2020
While reading this book, the feeling that constantly circled around my mind was what I would give just to be a fly on the wall when all of this was happening. I doubt if there was ever another time in history or place where so many brilliant minds came together and tried to figure out the nature of the universe and the meaning of everything.
It is an amazing story of the Vienna Circle that formed in the early part of the 20th century. It was perhaps the turmoil that we were going through between the two world wars that gave rise to such incredible explosion of original thinking, both in the fields of science and philosophy. But it was strange that all this congregated around a single city - Vienna.
This brought together people like Mach, Hilbert, Russell, Wittgenstein, Einstein, Victor Kraft, Karl Popper, Kafka, Klimt, Freud, Neurath, Godel, Pauli, Moritz Schlick, Carnap, and many others into intellectual contact and debate. The most unusual aspect of this conglomeration were two facts -- they didn't agree with each other, and that the interaction happened between people of such diverse interest and profession. In today's over-specialized world we rarely see serious interaction between scholars of different specializations, or even between sub-specialities of the same subject. Not only they were talking, but they were debating some of the most profound issues of the 20th century.
An amazing read! It is also a perfect companion to Eric Kandel's The Age of Insight.
It is an amazing story of the Vienna Circle that formed in the early part of the 20th century. It was perhaps the turmoil that we were going through between the two world wars that gave rise to such incredible explosion of original thinking, both in the fields of science and philosophy. But it was strange that all this congregated around a single city - Vienna.
This brought together people like Mach, Hilbert, Russell, Wittgenstein, Einstein, Victor Kraft, Karl Popper, Kafka, Klimt, Freud, Neurath, Godel, Pauli, Moritz Schlick, Carnap, and many others into intellectual contact and debate. The most unusual aspect of this conglomeration were two facts -- they didn't agree with each other, and that the interaction happened between people of such diverse interest and profession. In today's over-specialized world we rarely see serious interaction between scholars of different specializations, or even between sub-specialities of the same subject. Not only they were talking, but they were debating some of the most profound issues of the 20th century.
An amazing read! It is also a perfect companion to Eric Kandel's The Age of Insight.
May 3, 2022
One of those rare books that seems to the product of a lifetime: Sigmund is a passionate Viennese and a professor at the very same university that bred the famous Vienna Circle. Here he takes the reader to a tour of the ideas and personalities of a group of thinkers - not only the Circle members, but their predecessors, inspirators, and followers - that shaped what we understood as science. It was wonderful to read it following Benjamin Labatut's 'When we cease to understand the world', for Sigmund's meticulously researched non-fiction many times resembles Labatut's fantasies, and vice-versa.
May 9, 2022
TLDR: When all the best thinkers of an age get together, they incite academic/social/philosophical progress (and/or commit suicide).
January 11, 2020
Exact Thinking In Demented Times: The Vienna Circle and the Epic Quest for the Foundations of Science.
By Karl Sigmund.
Basic Books New York 2017.
Review by Galen Weitkamp.
Karl Sigmund (born in 1945) is a mathematician who has worked in the areas of ergodic theory, dynamical systems and biomathematics. He was a professor at the Institute of Mathematics in Vienna and now works at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg.
In the nineteen-twenties and thirties Vienna was an incredibly exciting place for philosophers, mathematicians, scientists, economists, artists, musicians and intellectuals in general. Coffee shops were filled with students and professors discussing the latest ideas; arguing, criticizing, revising and pushing the frontiers of human understanding. Moritz Schlick, Hans Hahn, Otto Neurath, Rudolf Carnap, Kurt Gödel are just a few of the names associated with those times in Vienna.
In philosophy, the Vienna Circle is probably most notable for the position known as logical positivism, first put forward by Ernst Mach (the physicist whose ideas inspired Albert Einstein’s development general relativity). The goal of logical positivism was to deliver philosophy from metaphysics and ground it squarely in logic and empirical science.
Karl Sigmund traces the history of these thinkers and thoughts from the early days of the Vienna Circle through the horrible destruction of the Nazi Anschluss.
Sigmund’s beautifully written book is both thorough and absorbing. The English translation is by the author himself with some editing by Douglas Hofstadter who also has added a most enjoyable and enthusiastic preface. Yes, the Douglas Hofstadter who wrote Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid.
By Karl Sigmund.
Basic Books New York 2017.
Review by Galen Weitkamp.
Karl Sigmund (born in 1945) is a mathematician who has worked in the areas of ergodic theory, dynamical systems and biomathematics. He was a professor at the Institute of Mathematics in Vienna and now works at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg.
In the nineteen-twenties and thirties Vienna was an incredibly exciting place for philosophers, mathematicians, scientists, economists, artists, musicians and intellectuals in general. Coffee shops were filled with students and professors discussing the latest ideas; arguing, criticizing, revising and pushing the frontiers of human understanding. Moritz Schlick, Hans Hahn, Otto Neurath, Rudolf Carnap, Kurt Gödel are just a few of the names associated with those times in Vienna.
In philosophy, the Vienna Circle is probably most notable for the position known as logical positivism, first put forward by Ernst Mach (the physicist whose ideas inspired Albert Einstein’s development general relativity). The goal of logical positivism was to deliver philosophy from metaphysics and ground it squarely in logic and empirical science.
Karl Sigmund traces the history of these thinkers and thoughts from the early days of the Vienna Circle through the horrible destruction of the Nazi Anschluss.
Sigmund’s beautifully written book is both thorough and absorbing. The English translation is by the author himself with some editing by Douglas Hofstadter who also has added a most enjoyable and enthusiastic preface. Yes, the Douglas Hofstadter who wrote Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid.
Read
March 22, 2018I can't get enough of these group intellectual biographies! This gives a lot more detail on the flow of characters into and out of the Vienna Circle, their hangers-on and haters (and killers). Neurath is the most interesting character (big surprise), but I learned the most from the early scene-setting covering Mach and Boltzmann, the generation before the Urkreis. There is more focus on personal idiosyncrasies, feuds, and friendships than on the big intellectual movements described in Wittgenstein's Vienna.
March 3, 2018
This excellent book first posits that theories serve solely to simplify thought and causality is nothing more than the regular connection of events. In this sense, causal links do not provide an additional explanation. Natural laws are mere prescriptions guiding our expectations. Most researchers ascribe a reality beyond the human mind to the basic concepts of physics, such as mass, force, and atom, whereas they have no other purpose than to connect experiences in an economical fashion. Moreover, it is commonly believed that these forces and masses constitute the true field of inquiry, and that if they were specified, everything else would follow directly from the equilibrium and the motion of these masses.
But this view confuses reality with representation. Force, mass, and the atom are mere concepts—just intellectual props. Someone who knew the world only through the theater, and who came across the mechanical contraptions behind the scenes, would likewise come to think that the real world needs a backstage… In that sense, we should not confuse the foundations of the real world with the intellectual props that serve to evoke the world on the stage of our thoughts.
Without at least an elementary instruction in mathematics and science, man will remain a stranger in this world, a stranger in the culture that supports him. All knowledge must be grounded in experience, and all experience grounded in perception. Colors, sounds, temperatures, pressures, spaces, times, and so forth, are connected to one another in manifold ways; and attached to them are moods, feelings and desires. In this vast web, only that which is relatively solid and permanent stands out prominently, engraving itself on the memory and expressing itself in language. A relatively greater permanence is exhibited by certain patterns of colors, sounds, pressures, and the like, which are bound together by space and time. Such patterns are recognized as objects, and they are assigned names.
There exists no further object independent of our sensations, no “thing in itself”. We thus know only appearances, never a thing in itself just the world of our own sensations. The laws of nature are free creations of the human mind, and their purpose is to relate observed facts in a consistent manner. Several different models can describe the same set of observations; when that happens, settling on one model rather than another is purely a matter of convention, based on whatever appears to be simpler and handier. There is no objective “fact of the matter.” Moreover, abstract notions such as force and electric charge are defined only by the ways that they are used.
Consequently, it makes no sense to talk about such notions. I do not exist anymore than any other thing does: Among the relatively long lasting patterns of memories, moods, feelings, etc., there is one pattern that is attached to a special body, and that pattern is called ‘I’, or Ego…Yet this Ego is just as transient as are other things.
The Ego cannot be saved. It is a mere illusion. It is a quick fix that we exploit to put some order in our thoughts. Nothing truly exists but combinations of colors, sounds, temperatures, pressures, spaces, times, and their associated moods, feelings and desires. Everything is eternally changing.
With this as a starting point, the author gathers the best minds on the planet, provides them with comfortable chairs in Vienna at the beginning of the 20th century and stage manages an incredible intellectual adventure.
But this view confuses reality with representation. Force, mass, and the atom are mere concepts—just intellectual props. Someone who knew the world only through the theater, and who came across the mechanical contraptions behind the scenes, would likewise come to think that the real world needs a backstage… In that sense, we should not confuse the foundations of the real world with the intellectual props that serve to evoke the world on the stage of our thoughts.
Without at least an elementary instruction in mathematics and science, man will remain a stranger in this world, a stranger in the culture that supports him. All knowledge must be grounded in experience, and all experience grounded in perception. Colors, sounds, temperatures, pressures, spaces, times, and so forth, are connected to one another in manifold ways; and attached to them are moods, feelings and desires. In this vast web, only that which is relatively solid and permanent stands out prominently, engraving itself on the memory and expressing itself in language. A relatively greater permanence is exhibited by certain patterns of colors, sounds, pressures, and the like, which are bound together by space and time. Such patterns are recognized as objects, and they are assigned names.
There exists no further object independent of our sensations, no “thing in itself”. We thus know only appearances, never a thing in itself just the world of our own sensations. The laws of nature are free creations of the human mind, and their purpose is to relate observed facts in a consistent manner. Several different models can describe the same set of observations; when that happens, settling on one model rather than another is purely a matter of convention, based on whatever appears to be simpler and handier. There is no objective “fact of the matter.” Moreover, abstract notions such as force and electric charge are defined only by the ways that they are used.
Consequently, it makes no sense to talk about such notions. I do not exist anymore than any other thing does: Among the relatively long lasting patterns of memories, moods, feelings, etc., there is one pattern that is attached to a special body, and that pattern is called ‘I’, or Ego…Yet this Ego is just as transient as are other things.
The Ego cannot be saved. It is a mere illusion. It is a quick fix that we exploit to put some order in our thoughts. Nothing truly exists but combinations of colors, sounds, temperatures, pressures, spaces, times, and their associated moods, feelings and desires. Everything is eternally changing.
With this as a starting point, the author gathers the best minds on the planet, provides them with comfortable chairs in Vienna at the beginning of the 20th century and stage manages an incredible intellectual adventure.
January 18, 2019
Incredible!!! I loved another one of his books (Games of Life), and he is just as clear, humorous, entertaining, and thorough in this one. Sigmund is the world’s expert on the Vienna Circle, and this book is a delightful history of the central figures. It all takes place amidst massive political upheavals and the rise of the Nazi party.
Apart from being historically fascinating, I felt that the book’s best parts were Sigmund’s exceptionally clear descriptions of breakthroughs in math, philosophy, and physics. Einstein discovering absolute speed, “tautologies” in math and philosophy, godel’s incompleteness theorems, Hilbert vs. Brower and the Law of the Excluded Middle, and more. I also loved the anecdotes about renowned figures - a window into their personalities! Eccentric, isolationist, ever-changing Wittgenstein. Einstein and Godel’s friendship. The funniest introduction of all time, in which Moritz Schlick welcomes Otto Neurath with the words: “Herr Neurath has declared himself ready to give a lecture today. He states that he wishes to speak on the unity of science. I cannot imagine that such a topic would be of interest to anyone in this room, but I nonetheless cordially extend an invitation to Herr Neurath to begin his talk.”
I strongly recommend this book! Sigmund is one-of-a-kind, and the topic is fascinating.
Apart from being historically fascinating, I felt that the book’s best parts were Sigmund’s exceptionally clear descriptions of breakthroughs in math, philosophy, and physics. Einstein discovering absolute speed, “tautologies” in math and philosophy, godel’s incompleteness theorems, Hilbert vs. Brower and the Law of the Excluded Middle, and more. I also loved the anecdotes about renowned figures - a window into their personalities! Eccentric, isolationist, ever-changing Wittgenstein. Einstein and Godel’s friendship. The funniest introduction of all time, in which Moritz Schlick welcomes Otto Neurath with the words: “Herr Neurath has declared himself ready to give a lecture today. He states that he wishes to speak on the unity of science. I cannot imagine that such a topic would be of interest to anyone in this room, but I nonetheless cordially extend an invitation to Herr Neurath to begin his talk.”
I strongly recommend this book! Sigmund is one-of-a-kind, and the topic is fascinating.
January 25, 2019
I thoroughly enjoyed Ray Monk’s biography of Wittgenstein as well as Bertrand Russell’s, “History of Philosophy,” and this is a wonderful distillation of an era of such enigmatic and esteemed mental giants. Both the aforementioned are discussed and put into clearer focus relative to their peers known as the Vienna Circle. The philosophical writings of all of these men is so far beyond me as to be an utterly indecipherable code, but the stories of their lives and associations allows me to have some tangible appreciation for the men and women who plumb the intellectual depths of philosophy by means of mathematics, set theory, logic, and extraordinary deduction regarding language. The period of time covered by the author spans the late 19th and m20th centuries. The cast of characters is a wonderfully diverse and endlessly entertaining group that includes history’s finest mathematicians, logicians, and physicists who all comprised the Vienna Circle. I highly recommend this book as an accessible and interesting means of getting a window on the very deep thinking of these brilliant people who form the foundation of modern computing, logic, and philosophy.
May 5, 2018
Brīnišķīga, labi uzrakstīta ideju biogrāfija par Vienna Circle biedriem un tiem pietuvinātām personām - Karnapu, Šliku, Gēdeli, Vitgenšteinu un citiem. Studiju laikā Karnaps un Popers ļoti, ļoti uzrunāja, un bija interesanti viņu idejas un dzīves saprast mazliet detalizētāk.
Autors ļoti veiksmīgi šīs idejas liek tā laika zinātnes un matemātikas atklājumu kontekstā. Patīkami pārsteidza, cik veiksmīgi un skaidri autors izskaidro sarežģītas idejas - Gēdeļa nepilnības teorēmas, Rasela paradoksus, Einšteina un Boltzmana fiziku. Ir sajūta, ka pēc grāmatas izlasīšanas daudzas no šīm idejām saprotu krieni labāk, nekā pirms tam.
P.S. Grāmata ir krietni garāka un detalizētāka, nekā gaidīju (Kindle formāts to veiksmīgi noslēpa). Ņemiet to vērā.
P.P.S. Vitgenšteins bija ļoti nepatīkams, nejauks cilvēks.
Autors ļoti veiksmīgi šīs idejas liek tā laika zinātnes un matemātikas atklājumu kontekstā. Patīkami pārsteidza, cik veiksmīgi un skaidri autors izskaidro sarežģītas idejas - Gēdeļa nepilnības teorēmas, Rasela paradoksus, Einšteina un Boltzmana fiziku. Ir sajūta, ka pēc grāmatas izlasīšanas daudzas no šīm idejām saprotu krieni labāk, nekā pirms tam.
P.S. Grāmata ir krietni garāka un detalizētāka, nekā gaidīju (Kindle formāts to veiksmīgi noslēpa). Ņemiet to vērā.
P.P.S. Vitgenšteins bija ļoti nepatīkams, nejauks cilvēks.
July 5, 2020
'The Wokists and the Trumpists are not opposites.
They are just rival brands offering the same product:
Tribe membership.
The price demanded by each brand is also the same:
The abandonment of reason.'
Robert Zubrin.
Btw Zubrin reminds me of Wittgenstein asking Russell whether he considered him to be a total fool. If so, he would become an aeronaut; if not, then a philosopher. In response, Russell asked him to submit an essay as a kind of test. 'As soon as I had read the first sentence,' Russell later responded, 'I was convinced that Wittgenstein was a genius, and assured him that he should by no means become an aeronaut. And he didn't.'
They are just rival brands offering the same product:
Tribe membership.
The price demanded by each brand is also the same:
The abandonment of reason.'
Robert Zubrin.
Btw Zubrin reminds me of Wittgenstein asking Russell whether he considered him to be a total fool. If so, he would become an aeronaut; if not, then a philosopher. In response, Russell asked him to submit an essay as a kind of test. 'As soon as I had read the first sentence,' Russell later responded, 'I was convinced that Wittgenstein was a genius, and assured him that he should by no means become an aeronaut. And he didn't.'
November 6, 2021
An interesting "group biography" of a collection of prominent philosophers from the first half of the 20th Century, all linked by their concern with the philosophy of science and the nexus of the Austrian city of Vienna, where many of them lived or worked in the interwar period.
The book covers all the interpersonal dramas about figures such as Wittgenstein, Gödel, Carnap, Popper and others, and also gives sort of capsule summaries of their key discoveries or assertions.
As an intellectual biography of a period it's sort of limited — the members of the "Vienna Circle" didn't all agree about the same things, and often dealt with extremely arcane subjects, so the book ends up giving sort of an amuse bouche of each figure's ideas rather than a deep understanding of their intellectual currents. But from these little vignettes still emerges a sort of general portrait of the concerns that animated the Vienna Circle.
And the broader portrait of their milieu — the "demented times" of the title, the economic chaos and social disorder of interwar Austria, culminating in the rise of fascism, is even more compelling, especially juxtaposed against the rationalist, positivist beliefs of the Vienna Circle. (One recurring contrast is between the Vienna Circle and their German contemporary, Martin Heidegger, whose proto-existentialism was even more radically at odds with the Vienna positivists than Heidegger's Nazi allegiance.
Pretty readable for non-specialists, despite the frequently dense philosophical content.
The book covers all the interpersonal dramas about figures such as Wittgenstein, Gödel, Carnap, Popper and others, and also gives sort of capsule summaries of their key discoveries or assertions.
As an intellectual biography of a period it's sort of limited — the members of the "Vienna Circle" didn't all agree about the same things, and often dealt with extremely arcane subjects, so the book ends up giving sort of an amuse bouche of each figure's ideas rather than a deep understanding of their intellectual currents. But from these little vignettes still emerges a sort of general portrait of the concerns that animated the Vienna Circle.
And the broader portrait of their milieu — the "demented times" of the title, the economic chaos and social disorder of interwar Austria, culminating in the rise of fascism, is even more compelling, especially juxtaposed against the rationalist, positivist beliefs of the Vienna Circle. (One recurring contrast is between the Vienna Circle and their German contemporary, Martin Heidegger, whose proto-existentialism was even more radically at odds with the Vienna positivists than Heidegger's Nazi allegiance.
Pretty readable for non-specialists, despite the frequently dense philosophical content.
October 27, 2018
A gossipy account of the mathematicians turned philosophers who gathered in Vienna in the years before WWII. The rise of the Nazis serves as a terrifying backdrop as we learn about the squabbles and friendships of some extremely smart people. But as if to prove the stereotype, all the eccentricity , sometimes veering into madness that you might expect from true geniuses appears. So this is a book that helps you learn who these people were. (Including Gödel, Popper, Wittgenstein and others. Einstein makes an appearance, but isn't really a subject.)
Lots of interesting personality insights. Spoiler alert: Wittgenstein was kind of a dick.
Lots of interesting personality insights. Spoiler alert: Wittgenstein was kind of a dick.
January 3, 2019
I'm really torn on this one. I wanted to like it a lot more than I did, but on reading it, I realize the people I wanted to learn more about where all the figures at the periphery: Gödel, Wittgenstein, and Popper. But the actual members of the Vienna Circle just weren't that interesting to me. This is no fault of the book or the author, who clearly knows his material and tells the tale effectively, but it was hard to be compelled by people who I only vaguely recognize and few of whom had enough life breathed into their stories to make me want to know more.
May 2, 2020
This was a great book touching upon the main players in philosophy (and henceforth maths and physics) during some of the most horrific times in Europe. If you are looking for in depth discussion about their philosophical ideas you will be disappoint. However if you are looking instead for the thought processes and brief biographies of Schlick, Han, Mach, Wittengstein etc then this is the perfect book. Definitely the type of book that will take a few reads to fully appreciated. Also an interesting read especially during these trying times.
March 21, 2021
Прекрасна, дуже жива, цікава та інформативна книжка про історію Віденського гуртка і про долі його членів на фоні епохи всіх відомих тогочасних віденських персонажів від Фрейда до Музіля. Дуже рекомендую до прочитання.
October 23, 2017
"Born in the tumultuous emergence of World War I and dissipated by the disruption of World War II, violence punctuates the Circle’s story. This includes physicist-cum-revolutionary Friedrich Adler’s assassination of Austrian minister-president Count Karl von Stürgkh, civil unrest even unto cremation riots, “the frantic 1920s”, and on to the cruelly ironic slaying on the Philosophers’ Staircase at the University of Vienna of Schlick by a former student. Philosophical debate mirrored these physical battles. Simplified, the eventual neopositivism of the Circle contrary to idealism rested on a central thesis of verificationism, asserting that only statements verifiable are cognitively meaningful. As the author observes in reviewing these important decades in the development of Western philosophy: “The crude ideology of the Nazis had always tended to side with the idealistic philosophers, all the way from Plato to Heidegger, and the blind obedience of Hitler’s troops could well have distant roots in Immanuel Kant’s ethics of duty.”
As an avid reader, I applaud the author for embracing the seldom-used technique of a summary epigraph per chapter. It comes across as one part of the author’s obvious enthusiasm in the Circle. Author Karl Sigmund is a professor of mathematics at the University of Vienna and one of the pioneers of evolutionary game theory. As he says here, “the Vienna Circle has been with me for half a century.” This history is decades in the making and well worth the wait for anyone interested in the development of Western philosophy..."
[Look for my entire review at MAA Reviews]
As an avid reader, I applaud the author for embracing the seldom-used technique of a summary epigraph per chapter. It comes across as one part of the author’s obvious enthusiasm in the Circle. Author Karl Sigmund is a professor of mathematics at the University of Vienna and one of the pioneers of evolutionary game theory. As he says here, “the Vienna Circle has been with me for half a century.” This history is decades in the making and well worth the wait for anyone interested in the development of Western philosophy..."
[Look for my entire review at MAA Reviews]
June 14, 2018
Between the two Great Wars there assembled in Vienna, Austria, meeting every Thursday evening in a University of Vienna lecture hall, a group of scientists, mathematicians, and philosophers, calling themselves the Vienna Circle. Their aim was to rid philosophy of metaphysics, of the obscurantism of religion, German Idealism of Heidegger and Hegel, and Plato's “pure” realm of “forms” or “ideas.” To the members of the Circle, talk of these things was nonsensical. The Vienna Circle were empiricists: there is knowledge only through experience, only from what we can obtain from our senses, and this knowledge is obtained by logical analysis. They were wary of the ambiguity of natural language.
Author Karl Sigmund, himself a professor of mathematics at the University of Vienna, considered himself destined to write this history of one of the most illustrious group of thinkers the world has ever seen. Sigmund takes us through the productive years of the Circle, 1924 to 1936, as all around them the world was falling apart. Austria and its economy had not yet recovered from WWI, anti-semitism was on the rise, and the Nazis were gaining power in nearby Germany. These were the “demented times” in which the Vienna Circle did their work, engaged in the quest for the foundations of science.
The Vienna Circle was comprised of a core of: philosopher Moritz Schlick, mathematician Hans Hahn, and social reformer Otto Neurath. They saw themselves as following in the tradition of physicists Ernst Mach and Ludwig Boltzmann, both who had made great scientific discoveries as well as taught in Vienna at the turn of the century.
Others would soon join the Circle: philosophers Rudolf Carnap, Herbert Feigl, the brilliant mathematician and logician Kurt Gödel, and Gustav Bergmann. On the periphery of the group, but always interacting with them, were A.J. Ayers, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russell, Karl Popper, Albert Einstein, Willard Van Orman Quine, Frank Ramsey, and Alfred Tarski.
What an unbelievable assembly of intellect!
I admit to having been familiar with most of the prominent players discussed here through my work at the university a lifetime ago, which made the book all the more meaningful for me. But it took Sigmund and his book to put all these figures into historical perspective, bringing to life the whole social and political atmosphere in which they lived and worked. Sigmund makes frequent digressions in his timeline for biographies of the main characters, relaying anecdotes about the many philosophical battles among the members – yes, they didn't agree on everything – and he carries the influence of the Circle through the Second World War and beyond, as members fled the Nazi onslaught to all corners of the world, many of them finding careers in America's top universities.
EXACT THINKING IN DEMENTED TIMES is a book of philosophy, history, and traces the very roots of present day scientific ventures. Excellent.
Author Karl Sigmund, himself a professor of mathematics at the University of Vienna, considered himself destined to write this history of one of the most illustrious group of thinkers the world has ever seen. Sigmund takes us through the productive years of the Circle, 1924 to 1936, as all around them the world was falling apart. Austria and its economy had not yet recovered from WWI, anti-semitism was on the rise, and the Nazis were gaining power in nearby Germany. These were the “demented times” in which the Vienna Circle did their work, engaged in the quest for the foundations of science.
The Vienna Circle was comprised of a core of: philosopher Moritz Schlick, mathematician Hans Hahn, and social reformer Otto Neurath. They saw themselves as following in the tradition of physicists Ernst Mach and Ludwig Boltzmann, both who had made great scientific discoveries as well as taught in Vienna at the turn of the century.
Others would soon join the Circle: philosophers Rudolf Carnap, Herbert Feigl, the brilliant mathematician and logician Kurt Gödel, and Gustav Bergmann. On the periphery of the group, but always interacting with them, were A.J. Ayers, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russell, Karl Popper, Albert Einstein, Willard Van Orman Quine, Frank Ramsey, and Alfred Tarski.
What an unbelievable assembly of intellect!
I admit to having been familiar with most of the prominent players discussed here through my work at the university a lifetime ago, which made the book all the more meaningful for me. But it took Sigmund and his book to put all these figures into historical perspective, bringing to life the whole social and political atmosphere in which they lived and worked. Sigmund makes frequent digressions in his timeline for biographies of the main characters, relaying anecdotes about the many philosophical battles among the members – yes, they didn't agree on everything – and he carries the influence of the Circle through the Second World War and beyond, as members fled the Nazi onslaught to all corners of the world, many of them finding careers in America's top universities.
EXACT THINKING IN DEMENTED TIMES is a book of philosophy, history, and traces the very roots of present day scientific ventures. Excellent.
December 24, 2018
Every scientist is trailed by the shadow of the Vienna Circle; so entrenched in our educational system are the germs of 'the scientific worldview'. Karl Sigmund, himself an emeritus professor of mathematics from the University of Vienna, provides a sympathetic and authoritative history of the Vienna Circle and the demented times in which it flourished. Today, we have the demented times, but lack the optimism.
June 9, 2018
This is such a remarkable work of biography and I'm very glad that an English edition was produced. The Vienna Circle was one of the most important meeting of minds in history and the formation, membership, conflicts, and interaction with European culture in the first half of the 20th century all make for engrossing reading. With names like Russell, Einstein, Schlick, Neurath, Carnap, Wittgenstein, Gödel, and Popper; the level of discourse and analysis here is very high and Professor Karl Sigmund is a very capable guide. The conflict with Wittgenstein and Karl Popper in particular makes for some of the most compelling reading as does the dissolution of the group at the outset of the second world war. If you have even a passing interest in any of the figures mentioned above I would strongly recommend this. Brilliant!
May 23, 2021
Detailed group biography tracing the rise and fall of the Vienna Circle. More emphasis on interpersonal relationships than constructive engagement of their ideas--ideas were engaged somewhat unevenly, and I would have preferred a bit more consistent engagement because I was hoping for more of an intellectual history than biographical emphasis.
That said, it was interesting to look at the overlapping relationships of the VC; I did appreciate the way in which Sigmund emphasized the VC as a space where science/math and humanities/philosophy were able to communicate and engage each other in ways that are increasingly difficult to find in contemporary discourse.
That said, it was interesting to look at the overlapping relationships of the VC; I did appreciate the way in which Sigmund emphasized the VC as a space where science/math and humanities/philosophy were able to communicate and engage each other in ways that are increasingly difficult to find in contemporary discourse.
August 22, 2018
Life's too short for lots of things, and this book is one of them. It doesn't get around to explaining what the vienna circle was, or why I should care. There are some amusing anecdotes about some neat people, but the majority of it is banal discussions of their early lives, the girls they dated, and such blither. What's worse is Sigmund is an English professor, and needs to prove it by writing in a style so affected it actually pained me to read.
August 23, 2021
Nicht gerade das, was ich erwartet habe.
Die größte Enttäuschung ist, es enthält zu wenig zur Philosophie. Aber wie will man die Systeme einer dutzend Grossdenker in einem Band wiedergeben? Stattdessen haben wir hauptsächlich Biografien und Anekdoten, häufig Leichtes, manchmal trüb, öfters frivol, die Höchsts und Tiefs von diesem und jenem.
Die größte Enttäuschung ist, es enthält zu wenig zur Philosophie. Aber wie will man die Systeme einer dutzend Grossdenker in einem Band wiedergeben? Stattdessen haben wir hauptsächlich Biografien und Anekdoten, häufig Leichtes, manchmal trüb, öfters frivol, die Höchsts und Tiefs von diesem und jenem.
February 28, 2021
A thoroughly impressive group biography of the Vienna Circle and those adjacent to it.
The book is written by the acclaimed Viennese mathematician Karl Sigmund. He has taken on a monumental task by attempting to flesh out these many, sometimes lesser-known, complex, brilliant and often quirky philosopher-scientists and scientist-philosophers. And what a success! Their stories and personalities are brought to life vividly thanks to meticulous research. We learn not only where they were from, how their interests evolved and how they got their jobs in Vienna, but also who they loved, what their politics were and how they bounced their ideas off one another. This may be what one expects of a biography, but the extent to which all those presented here are done justice is remarkable.
Moreover, aside from the numerous anecdotes and memorable quotes, the backdrop also plays a major role and is very well presented. Whether it's old Imperial Vienna, where we learn about the lives and work of the honorary founding fathers of Vienna Circle, Ernst Mach and Ludwig Boltzmann, the chaos of WWI, the poverty but peace of the 1920s or the subsequent descent into political madness in the 1930s, each epoch provides important context to the often disinterested yet still often politically loaded work of the Circle.
To illustrate the importance of this context allow me to paraphrase one of the books most memorable lines: the Vienna Circle was a left-wing group in a right-wing university, in a left-wing town, in a right-wing country. This situation alone makes it very difficult for even the best fiction writer to come up with a scenario that contains more intrigue. Yet this all actually happened.
So, who were the Vienna Circle and what did they stand for? Moritz Schlick, Rudolf Carnap, Hans Hahn and Otto Neurath were its most prominent members, but they were in frequent and close contact with possibly better-known names such as Kurt Gödel, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russel, Karl Popper and Albert Einstein. All these thinkers and many more are featured in the book, but the emphasis is, of course, on the central members of the Circle. The mission of these men was to clarify philosophy and to promote science. They wanted a philosophy that doesn't get lost in metaphysical speculation but focuses on discernable meaning and clarity. Furthermore, science was to be solely the that which concerns itself with what is (physics, not metaphysics) and thus the basis of knowledge was to be found in empirical fact. This no-nonsense approach drove them to vigorously debating what differentiated science from pseudoscience, which eventually led to Popper's widely endorsed falsifiability principle.
Even more importantly, perhaps, the Vienna Circle coined and promoted the Scientific Worldview. In today's world, driven by so much technology, algorithms and big data, one might think that the Scientific Worldview has triumphed to a fault and that maybe we should get in touch with our subjectivity more often. But, in the world that the Vienna Circle inhabited, irrational destructive passions engulfed the world twice, leading to two world wars and the most terrible genocide in history. In opposition to that all, the Circle wanted fact-based decision making and social policy that would make people lives more livable. They promoted this while never foregoing the pleasures of life: love, friendship and waltzing. (The Vienna Circle decided in part to call themselves that because of the association between a circle and the well known Viennese waltz.)
To add to this all, the stories featured in the book include affairs, suicide, escape to the UK on the last boat to leave the Netherlands after the Nazi invasion, the boiling ideological tensions in Vienna that lead to civil war, a high-profile political assassination carried out by a former physicist and friend to Einstein and the murder of a member of the Circle by a deranged student.
The book also goes into an appropriate amount of detail regarding the life work of these thinkers. You will have a basic understanding of their contributions to their fields, but this aspect is not the emphasis of this book. So, if you are interested in this book hoping to take a deep dive into logic or positivism, this is not that book. That said, there is one chapter that spends a longer than usual amount of time depicting the work of some of the mathematicians presented in this book. The chapter is more technical than usual and offers little to those of us not particularly gifted at mathematics. I suppose the author being a mathematician himself, couldn't help himself.
All in all, this is a stellar book that not only fleshes out some of the 20th century's most eminent thinkers but also contrasts their quest for facts and clarity with some of the darkest times in European history. Truly inspiring!
The book is written by the acclaimed Viennese mathematician Karl Sigmund. He has taken on a monumental task by attempting to flesh out these many, sometimes lesser-known, complex, brilliant and often quirky philosopher-scientists and scientist-philosophers. And what a success! Their stories and personalities are brought to life vividly thanks to meticulous research. We learn not only where they were from, how their interests evolved and how they got their jobs in Vienna, but also who they loved, what their politics were and how they bounced their ideas off one another. This may be what one expects of a biography, but the extent to which all those presented here are done justice is remarkable.
Moreover, aside from the numerous anecdotes and memorable quotes, the backdrop also plays a major role and is very well presented. Whether it's old Imperial Vienna, where we learn about the lives and work of the honorary founding fathers of Vienna Circle, Ernst Mach and Ludwig Boltzmann, the chaos of WWI, the poverty but peace of the 1920s or the subsequent descent into political madness in the 1930s, each epoch provides important context to the often disinterested yet still often politically loaded work of the Circle.
To illustrate the importance of this context allow me to paraphrase one of the books most memorable lines: the Vienna Circle was a left-wing group in a right-wing university, in a left-wing town, in a right-wing country. This situation alone makes it very difficult for even the best fiction writer to come up with a scenario that contains more intrigue. Yet this all actually happened.
So, who were the Vienna Circle and what did they stand for? Moritz Schlick, Rudolf Carnap, Hans Hahn and Otto Neurath were its most prominent members, but they were in frequent and close contact with possibly better-known names such as Kurt Gödel, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russel, Karl Popper and Albert Einstein. All these thinkers and many more are featured in the book, but the emphasis is, of course, on the central members of the Circle. The mission of these men was to clarify philosophy and to promote science. They wanted a philosophy that doesn't get lost in metaphysical speculation but focuses on discernable meaning and clarity. Furthermore, science was to be solely the that which concerns itself with what is (physics, not metaphysics) and thus the basis of knowledge was to be found in empirical fact. This no-nonsense approach drove them to vigorously debating what differentiated science from pseudoscience, which eventually led to Popper's widely endorsed falsifiability principle.
Even more importantly, perhaps, the Vienna Circle coined and promoted the Scientific Worldview. In today's world, driven by so much technology, algorithms and big data, one might think that the Scientific Worldview has triumphed to a fault and that maybe we should get in touch with our subjectivity more often. But, in the world that the Vienna Circle inhabited, irrational destructive passions engulfed the world twice, leading to two world wars and the most terrible genocide in history. In opposition to that all, the Circle wanted fact-based decision making and social policy that would make people lives more livable. They promoted this while never foregoing the pleasures of life: love, friendship and waltzing. (The Vienna Circle decided in part to call themselves that because of the association between a circle and the well known Viennese waltz.)
To add to this all, the stories featured in the book include affairs, suicide, escape to the UK on the last boat to leave the Netherlands after the Nazi invasion, the boiling ideological tensions in Vienna that lead to civil war, a high-profile political assassination carried out by a former physicist and friend to Einstein and the murder of a member of the Circle by a deranged student.
The book also goes into an appropriate amount of detail regarding the life work of these thinkers. You will have a basic understanding of their contributions to their fields, but this aspect is not the emphasis of this book. So, if you are interested in this book hoping to take a deep dive into logic or positivism, this is not that book. That said, there is one chapter that spends a longer than usual amount of time depicting the work of some of the mathematicians presented in this book. The chapter is more technical than usual and offers little to those of us not particularly gifted at mathematics. I suppose the author being a mathematician himself, couldn't help himself.
All in all, this is a stellar book that not only fleshes out some of the 20th century's most eminent thinkers but also contrasts their quest for facts and clarity with some of the darkest times in European history. Truly inspiring!
January 9, 2022
I've become fascinated by Vienna in the early 20th century. It gave birth to so many things that shaped the later half of the century: psychoanalysis, expressionism, relativity theory, atonality, fascism, and logical positivism. The only Viennese philosopher I've read is Wittgenstein, and my philosophical training almost never talked about historical context. (Can you believe that in two semesters reading Heidegger we never once discussed him being a Nazi?). I really enjoy books like this that provide context, even if they provide only very sketchy summaries of the philosophy.
Like the American Pragmatists, which I've read in depth, the Vienna Circle members were trying to draw out the philosophical conclusions of scientific advances over the last several centuries. At the University of Vienna, two physicists were even made chair of the philosophy department (Mach and Boltzmann). Unlike those unscientific Germans steeped in Hegel, the Viennese wanted to see if it was possible to stop doing metaphysics all together, and rely simply on the scientific method. To do so, they were obsessed with finding a 'ground' for science, such as by showing that all math comes from logic. Carnap's dissertation even tried to show that space and time were grounded in logic, which sounds completely absurd.
As all the disagreement between Circle members shows--such as Neurath's dismissal of Wittgenstein as a metaphysician--you can't do epistemology without metaphysics. Probably due to their math and physics background, the Circle members take for granted that there is a reality we can talk about, if we could only find the right way to form statements about it. They're captured by the image of physics as queen of the sciences. But once you say that there's a reality 'over there' (describable exactly in the language of math) and then you have us humans 'over here' (with our sense impressions that have nothing to do with reality), then all the philosophical acrobatics you can think of won't bring humpty dumpty back together again. This dualism goes back centuries and is only solved, to my knowledge, by the American pragmatists. Heidegger could actually be useful here. All the talk about the 'Nothing' isn't that complicated--it's just the idea that there is a reality outside of human experience that we can't say much about since we're bound by human experience. The Nothing 'nothings' because the reality outside experience is an active agent that will never be destroyed; it isn't a hidden text that we'll slowly decipher over time until we can read it all.
It also turns out that you can do science without foundations. We've never been in a position where we had to figure out why math was true so that we could tackle why physics was true so that we could then tackle chemistry and then biology and then the softer sciences and so on. Science has always worked through a self-bootstrapping method whose value is seen in the predictions it helps us make. The main move effected by Descartes and other early modern philosophers was showing that man is the measure of all things. Truths aren't handed down by elites who have access to secret knowledge but are determined by all of us. Rather than cutting off inquiry into things humans are interested in (ethics, aesthetics, politics), as the Circle members tried to do, we should figure out how to learn from science to better inquire into human affairs.
I wish I had learned more from the book about how Circles are created. Where is the Seattle Circle? Am I not invited? If there isn't one, how is one created? All of the stories of people joining the Circle have the aura of inevitability. "Well then so-and-so showed up in Vienna, so of course they joined the circle." What are the conditions of a strong Circle? Despite the title, it does not seem that the Circle members were trying to, for example, stave off fascism by describing the conditions of truth. Besides Neurath, they were almost entirely apolitical. As a work of history, I'm not sure what the conditions were that gave rise to the circle besides an empire that had money to spend on philosophy and math departments. It's clear that the second World War destroyed the circle, but it's surprising that the first didn't have more impact. In fact, it was strongest during the 20's and early 30's. Did WWI feed the Circle, or was it simply able to maintain momentum for a time?
Like the American Pragmatists, which I've read in depth, the Vienna Circle members were trying to draw out the philosophical conclusions of scientific advances over the last several centuries. At the University of Vienna, two physicists were even made chair of the philosophy department (Mach and Boltzmann). Unlike those unscientific Germans steeped in Hegel, the Viennese wanted to see if it was possible to stop doing metaphysics all together, and rely simply on the scientific method. To do so, they were obsessed with finding a 'ground' for science, such as by showing that all math comes from logic. Carnap's dissertation even tried to show that space and time were grounded in logic, which sounds completely absurd.
As all the disagreement between Circle members shows--such as Neurath's dismissal of Wittgenstein as a metaphysician--you can't do epistemology without metaphysics. Probably due to their math and physics background, the Circle members take for granted that there is a reality we can talk about, if we could only find the right way to form statements about it. They're captured by the image of physics as queen of the sciences. But once you say that there's a reality 'over there' (describable exactly in the language of math) and then you have us humans 'over here' (with our sense impressions that have nothing to do with reality), then all the philosophical acrobatics you can think of won't bring humpty dumpty back together again. This dualism goes back centuries and is only solved, to my knowledge, by the American pragmatists. Heidegger could actually be useful here. All the talk about the 'Nothing' isn't that complicated--it's just the idea that there is a reality outside of human experience that we can't say much about since we're bound by human experience. The Nothing 'nothings' because the reality outside experience is an active agent that will never be destroyed; it isn't a hidden text that we'll slowly decipher over time until we can read it all.
It also turns out that you can do science without foundations. We've never been in a position where we had to figure out why math was true so that we could tackle why physics was true so that we could then tackle chemistry and then biology and then the softer sciences and so on. Science has always worked through a self-bootstrapping method whose value is seen in the predictions it helps us make. The main move effected by Descartes and other early modern philosophers was showing that man is the measure of all things. Truths aren't handed down by elites who have access to secret knowledge but are determined by all of us. Rather than cutting off inquiry into things humans are interested in (ethics, aesthetics, politics), as the Circle members tried to do, we should figure out how to learn from science to better inquire into human affairs.
I wish I had learned more from the book about how Circles are created. Where is the Seattle Circle? Am I not invited? If there isn't one, how is one created? All of the stories of people joining the Circle have the aura of inevitability. "Well then so-and-so showed up in Vienna, so of course they joined the circle." What are the conditions of a strong Circle? Despite the title, it does not seem that the Circle members were trying to, for example, stave off fascism by describing the conditions of truth. Besides Neurath, they were almost entirely apolitical. As a work of history, I'm not sure what the conditions were that gave rise to the circle besides an empire that had money to spend on philosophy and math departments. It's clear that the second World War destroyed the circle, but it's surprising that the first didn't have more impact. In fact, it was strongest during the 20's and early 30's. Did WWI feed the Circle, or was it simply able to maintain momentum for a time?
February 25, 2023
Chapter One
In 1924, Moritz Schlick, Hans Hahn and social reformer Otto Neurath launch a philosophical circle in Vienna. The goal of the circle was to create a purely science-based philosophy devoid of all discussion of metaphysics and other obscurantism. It was inspired by the work of Ludwig Boltzmann and Ernst Mach. Other guiding lights included Einstein, Russell and Hilbert.
Chapter 2
The focus is on Ernst Mach and Ludwig Boltzmann. Mach was a critic of Kant. He believed that there was no ding an sich. There were no ego impressions. Ours is a world without substance.
Boltzmann was a theorist. Famous for his kinetic theory of gases, Boltzmann and Mach disagreed on the existence of atoms. Mach thought them useful pictures, while Boltzmann needed them for his theory of gases.
Chapter 3
Einstein more or less settles the B-M debate with his papers on Brownian motion and the photoelectric effect. Other thoughts in the air: Einstein's relativity, non-Euclidean geometry and David Hilbert’s thought that math is thought.
Chapter 4
Hans Hahn is back in Vienna. Otto Neurath goes to prison.
Chapter 5
Rudolph carnap joins a circle. With Wittgenstein. They fawn on his every word except for Otto Neurath. Schlick meets Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein returns to philosophy
Chapter 6
Schlick visits the US. The Circle writes a book. Otto Neurath names the group. The focus is on empiricism. The subject of logic- tautology. Hahn attends seances. Carnap meets Heidegger; they turn away from each other.
Chapter 7
The scientific worldview is on the move. “Let no one stand apart!” Anti-Semitism in Vienna in 1923. Otto Neurath organizes the gardeners. Musil, Brock and Perutz.
Chapter 8
Karl Menger and dimension. Brouwer and intuitionism. Gödel.
Chapter 9
Popper bounces around the university. Popper against induction. Falsification and demarcation. Otto Neurath writes an unpublishable book. Wittgenstein as professor. Carnap and logical syntax. Carnap and Wittgenstein fight. Language games and meaning is use.
Chapter 10
The new chancellor of Germany. The end of democracy in Germany. Menger turns to ethics. Morgenstern wants an exact economics. Schlick returns to ethics and is stalked.
Chapter 11
Civil war in Austria. Neurath flees to the Netherlands. The Mach Society is disbanded. Hahn passes away. Vacancies and the end of the university. Tarski and Turing. Nelböck kills Schlick.
Chapter 12
Philosophers flee after Anschluss. Nelböck is released. Gödel and set theory. Gödel returns to Vienna. Oscar Morgenstern. Gödel and Einstein walk together. Neurath flees The Hague.
Chapter 13
Post war period. Wittgenstein in Cambridge. Popper in London. Popper asks: “Do Philosophical problems exist?” Wittgenstein swings a poker at his cousin. Popper and Feyerabend as outsiders.
This was a very interesting history. It is not a history of the philosophy, per se. The discussion of the verification theory is short and its permutations are not discussed.
In 1924, Moritz Schlick, Hans Hahn and social reformer Otto Neurath launch a philosophical circle in Vienna. The goal of the circle was to create a purely science-based philosophy devoid of all discussion of metaphysics and other obscurantism. It was inspired by the work of Ludwig Boltzmann and Ernst Mach. Other guiding lights included Einstein, Russell and Hilbert.
Chapter 2
The focus is on Ernst Mach and Ludwig Boltzmann. Mach was a critic of Kant. He believed that there was no ding an sich. There were no ego impressions. Ours is a world without substance.
Boltzmann was a theorist. Famous for his kinetic theory of gases, Boltzmann and Mach disagreed on the existence of atoms. Mach thought them useful pictures, while Boltzmann needed them for his theory of gases.
Chapter 3
Einstein more or less settles the B-M debate with his papers on Brownian motion and the photoelectric effect. Other thoughts in the air: Einstein's relativity, non-Euclidean geometry and David Hilbert’s thought that math is thought.
Chapter 4
Hans Hahn is back in Vienna. Otto Neurath goes to prison.
Chapter 5
Rudolph carnap joins a circle. With Wittgenstein. They fawn on his every word except for Otto Neurath. Schlick meets Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein returns to philosophy
Chapter 6
Schlick visits the US. The Circle writes a book. Otto Neurath names the group. The focus is on empiricism. The subject of logic- tautology. Hahn attends seances. Carnap meets Heidegger; they turn away from each other.
Chapter 7
The scientific worldview is on the move. “Let no one stand apart!” Anti-Semitism in Vienna in 1923. Otto Neurath organizes the gardeners. Musil, Brock and Perutz.
Chapter 8
Karl Menger and dimension. Brouwer and intuitionism. Gödel.
Chapter 9
Popper bounces around the university. Popper against induction. Falsification and demarcation. Otto Neurath writes an unpublishable book. Wittgenstein as professor. Carnap and logical syntax. Carnap and Wittgenstein fight. Language games and meaning is use.
Chapter 10
The new chancellor of Germany. The end of democracy in Germany. Menger turns to ethics. Morgenstern wants an exact economics. Schlick returns to ethics and is stalked.
Chapter 11
Civil war in Austria. Neurath flees to the Netherlands. The Mach Society is disbanded. Hahn passes away. Vacancies and the end of the university. Tarski and Turing. Nelböck kills Schlick.
Chapter 12
Philosophers flee after Anschluss. Nelböck is released. Gödel and set theory. Gödel returns to Vienna. Oscar Morgenstern. Gödel and Einstein walk together. Neurath flees The Hague.
Chapter 13
Post war period. Wittgenstein in Cambridge. Popper in London. Popper asks: “Do Philosophical problems exist?” Wittgenstein swings a poker at his cousin. Popper and Feyerabend as outsiders.
This was a very interesting history. It is not a history of the philosophy, per se. The discussion of the verification theory is short and its permutations are not discussed.
November 23, 2022
This is a fascinating account, more a chronicle than a book, about one of the greatest concentrations of brilliance in the twentieth century, centered in what is known as The Vienna Circle. The Circle conceived its task as discarding metaphysics as a dominant preoccupation in philosophy--taking with it idealism--and developing a philosophic concept of thought that was more tightly linked to the physical world. This entailed forays into math, economics, language, and society writ large.
Great scientists like Max Ernst developed some of the intellectual energies the Circle exploited. On the margins, Einstein exerted a substantial influence, Freud decidedly less so. Wittgenstein cast a spell over the Circle while other major figures such as Gödel and Popper took over as a kind of second wave or flourishing. Post-WWI and pre-Depression, the Circle helped Vienna keep its balance. Once the Depression hit, Vienna toppled and the Circle scattered.
Sigmund does an especially good job of explicating Wittgenstein's quirky stance as an anti-system builder who rejected logic itself as a secure pathway to truth. He demolished philosophy, too, or thought he did, grinding his way into positions that were, ultimately, a series of exercises in thinking not infected with hand-me-down assumptions divorced from the empirical reality of things (actually, the term things annoyed him, too, meaning that vague category of unrelated elements the rest of us toss into the things basket, but not as much as the absurd Platonism, "the thing in itself.") One of the pleasures of the book is the way Sigmund ravages Heidegger. The most disturbing element of the book is the account of how anti-semitism deracinated Germany and Austria much as it deracinated 15th century Spain.
If there is a mysterious figure here, working out of the realm of mathematics, it is Gödel with his incompleteness theorems. Once he had established the unprovability of axiom-based thinking, he put the world of thought into a kind of quantum space, where nothing is where it is and moves as fast as it does at the same time. Oddly, Gödel was a mathematical genius, mentally ill, and a Believer. And yet he became, as a man and thinker, kind of a coda to the whole enterprise as well as Einstein's best friend as they walked and talked their way around Princeton,.
Great scientists like Max Ernst developed some of the intellectual energies the Circle exploited. On the margins, Einstein exerted a substantial influence, Freud decidedly less so. Wittgenstein cast a spell over the Circle while other major figures such as Gödel and Popper took over as a kind of second wave or flourishing. Post-WWI and pre-Depression, the Circle helped Vienna keep its balance. Once the Depression hit, Vienna toppled and the Circle scattered.
Sigmund does an especially good job of explicating Wittgenstein's quirky stance as an anti-system builder who rejected logic itself as a secure pathway to truth. He demolished philosophy, too, or thought he did, grinding his way into positions that were, ultimately, a series of exercises in thinking not infected with hand-me-down assumptions divorced from the empirical reality of things (actually, the term things annoyed him, too, meaning that vague category of unrelated elements the rest of us toss into the things basket, but not as much as the absurd Platonism, "the thing in itself.") One of the pleasures of the book is the way Sigmund ravages Heidegger. The most disturbing element of the book is the account of how anti-semitism deracinated Germany and Austria much as it deracinated 15th century Spain.
If there is a mysterious figure here, working out of the realm of mathematics, it is Gödel with his incompleteness theorems. Once he had established the unprovability of axiom-based thinking, he put the world of thought into a kind of quantum space, where nothing is where it is and moves as fast as it does at the same time. Oddly, Gödel was a mathematical genius, mentally ill, and a Believer. And yet he became, as a man and thinker, kind of a coda to the whole enterprise as well as Einstein's best friend as they walked and talked their way around Princeton,.
January 21, 2021
If I could have my own personal Midnight In Paris, going back in time to hang out with fascinating historical figures at a moment when important things were happening and the world stood on the cusp of great change, I'd probably pick Renaissance Florence as my first choice, but Vienna between the wars at the time of the Vienna Circle would be a close second. Interestingly, the actual members of the Circle were often wrong in their views and were not the true giants. Kurt Godel was the only certified genius who was a member, and he sat on the edge of the Circle, disagreeing with much of their program. The leaders of the Circle - Schlick, Carnap and Neurath - were brilliant people, but not in the same league as the people with whom they rubbed shoulders -- Einstein, Wittgenstein, Popper, Pauli, Musil and more. And many of the ideas propounded by the Circle were ill conceived or just plain wrong (or even worse, to steal Pauli's phrase, not even wrong). They were heavily indebted to Wittgenstein, who they didn't really understand, and who was himself off track much of the time. But for me none of that took away from their brilliance. What fun it would have been to hang out with the Circle every week in a coffee house and debate the great philosophical issues of the modern age! I would have been shaking my head in disagreement far more than I would have been nodding, but the challenge of matching wits with these people over matters of such consequence at a time and place of genius and intellectual ferment would have been great fun and would have sharpened my own thinking. Later in his life when he had become a close friend of the aging Einstein at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton where they both had fellowships, Godel claimed to have found ways in the field equations of general relativity to allow for travel back in time. If anyone could have cracked this nut, it was Godel. We can only dream.
April 27, 2021
This is a very readable, comprehensive history of the Vienna Circle, nicely complemented by pictures of many of the members and associates of the Circle and relevant places in Austria and elsewhere.
Although the Vienna Circle has always been known to me as a philosophical community, it really had its roots in the work of physicists Ernst Mach and Ludwig Boltzmann. Mach and Boltzmann were broad thinkers, concerned not only with theoretical issues within physics but also with questions about what exactly physicists were doing when they observed and theorized. Mach famously opposed metaphysical realism, and metaphysics in general. Mach was, by my reading, much more epistemologist than metaphysician, with an emphasis on sensory impressions — what physicists do is observe by way of their senses and construct theoretical representations that allow us to understand our sensory impressions. Sigmund terms such concepts as atoms, force, and mass for Mach as “intellectual props.”
Boltzmann, while every bit the proponent of scientific understanding that Mach was, adopted a much more realist interpretation of science and its concepts. The two collided in a public debate over the reality of atoms. Boltzmann argued for a realist interpretation of atoms, even though, as Mach emphatically pointed out, no one had ever seen one. The debate focuses down on the question of sense impressions, or more loosely, direct experience. The question at the heart of the matter was the foundation of scientific knowledge, with Mach insisting that all of science rest ultimately on sense impressions. Boltzmann, while having no more patience than Mach with philosophical metaphysics, insisted that such fundamental concepts of science expressed what “really” existed.
The members of the Urkreis, the "Protocircle" that preceded the Vienna Circle itself, grew up intellectually under the influence of Mach and Boltzmann. Two core figures of the Urkreis, Hans Hahn and Otto Neurath, would go on to become founders of the Vienna Circle itself. Again, neither of the two was a philosopher, Hahn being a mathematician and Neurath an economist. But both held to what would become central tenets of the Vienna Circle — a rejection of philosophical metaphysics and strong convictions behind the priority of the empirical sciences.
The Vienna Circle itself promoted the “scientific worldview” from 1924 through the aftermath of World War II. It formed under the leadership of Moritz Schlick, philosopher at the University of Vienna, along with cofounders Hahn and Neurath. Two philosophical positions were consistent throughout the lifetime of the Circle — a rejection of philosophical metaphysics and a conviction that scientific knowledge be grounded in direct observation.
The Circle carried broad influence, beyond its actual members, touching and being touched by a who’s who of the intellectual times — Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, David Hilbert, Kurt Gödel, John von Neumann, Richard von Mises, Friedrich von Hayek, Robert Musil, and on and on. Maybe the Circle’s most noted philosopher, Rudolph Carnap, produced seminal works on the logical structure of science, treating logic as the connective tissue of scientific reasoning, separate from its content.
Sigmund’s telling of the tale of the Circle is historical much more so than philosophical per se. He rarely enters into in-depth philosophical discussions or criticism of the positions taken by members of the Circle, but rather a history of those positions, debates surrounding them, the Circle’s historical context, and the personal histories of its members.
All of those dimensions have interesting, entertaining, and curious aspects, including professional jealousies and competitiveness, personal and political agendas, and even murder (the shooting of Schlick by his former student, Johann Nelböck). Neurath in particular was a bigger-than-life character and probably pushed the Circle closest to political issues and positions.
And of course, the collision between the Circle and the Anschluss in 1938 scrambled the careers, personal lives, and in some cases the political convictions of the Circle’s members. The Circle did survive the war, but the Nazification of Austria and its intellectual life meant that a number of the Circle’s members would lose their academic positions, face political and personal pressures, and in some cases, become refugees.
Sigmund is not a philosopher (he is a mathematician), so I’m not going to fault him too strongly for not engaging in philosophical points with a critical eye.
I think it would be interesting, though, to go more deeply into an important tension in the thinking of members of the Circle, Carnap in particular. Those two principal tenets of the “scientific worldview” held, on the one hand, that scientific knowledge be grounded in observation, and on the other that philosophical metaphysics was not just a waste of time, but literally meaningless exactly because it was not grounded in the kind of observations and statements about them that scientific knowledge was grounded in. It’s one thing, though, to make a claim about the grounding of scientific knowledge and very much another to claim that anything that doesn’t adhere to the defining criterion of scientific knowledge is literally nonsense. If correct, that latter claim would seem to brand not only philosophical metaphysics but probably most of what people say when they speak as gibberish.
As it turns out of course, this narrow view of language and meaning was part of the criticism that Wittgenstein leveled against his own earlier work (the Tractatus), which was revered by many within the Circle, in his later thinking (represented by his Philosophical Investigations) and distanced him increasingly from the thinking of the Circle.
Readers should be aware that the relatively casual but caustic dismissals of thinkers of a different vein than the Circle’s members — e.g., Hegel, Heidegger, Feyerabend, even Kant — should not be taken at face value. Carnap’s famous paper on the The Elimination of Metaphysics Through the Logical Analysis of Language — a polemical attack on Heidegger’s metaphysics — is, at least to my reading, a paradigm of philosophical non-engagement.
That said, I definitely recommend the book, as an historical account of the Vienna Circle if not a philosophical treatment of the positions taken by its members. For a book of intellectual history, it reads very fluidly (partly due to Sigmund’s having translated his own German edition into English, with help from Douglas Hofstadter). I had wanted to know much more of the facts about the Circle, its own history and its place in the broader history of its time, and about the members personally. I got that.
Although the Vienna Circle has always been known to me as a philosophical community, it really had its roots in the work of physicists Ernst Mach and Ludwig Boltzmann. Mach and Boltzmann were broad thinkers, concerned not only with theoretical issues within physics but also with questions about what exactly physicists were doing when they observed and theorized. Mach famously opposed metaphysical realism, and metaphysics in general. Mach was, by my reading, much more epistemologist than metaphysician, with an emphasis on sensory impressions — what physicists do is observe by way of their senses and construct theoretical representations that allow us to understand our sensory impressions. Sigmund terms such concepts as atoms, force, and mass for Mach as “intellectual props.”
Boltzmann, while every bit the proponent of scientific understanding that Mach was, adopted a much more realist interpretation of science and its concepts. The two collided in a public debate over the reality of atoms. Boltzmann argued for a realist interpretation of atoms, even though, as Mach emphatically pointed out, no one had ever seen one. The debate focuses down on the question of sense impressions, or more loosely, direct experience. The question at the heart of the matter was the foundation of scientific knowledge, with Mach insisting that all of science rest ultimately on sense impressions. Boltzmann, while having no more patience than Mach with philosophical metaphysics, insisted that such fundamental concepts of science expressed what “really” existed.
The members of the Urkreis, the "Protocircle" that preceded the Vienna Circle itself, grew up intellectually under the influence of Mach and Boltzmann. Two core figures of the Urkreis, Hans Hahn and Otto Neurath, would go on to become founders of the Vienna Circle itself. Again, neither of the two was a philosopher, Hahn being a mathematician and Neurath an economist. But both held to what would become central tenets of the Vienna Circle — a rejection of philosophical metaphysics and strong convictions behind the priority of the empirical sciences.
The Vienna Circle itself promoted the “scientific worldview” from 1924 through the aftermath of World War II. It formed under the leadership of Moritz Schlick, philosopher at the University of Vienna, along with cofounders Hahn and Neurath. Two philosophical positions were consistent throughout the lifetime of the Circle — a rejection of philosophical metaphysics and a conviction that scientific knowledge be grounded in direct observation.
The Circle carried broad influence, beyond its actual members, touching and being touched by a who’s who of the intellectual times — Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, David Hilbert, Kurt Gödel, John von Neumann, Richard von Mises, Friedrich von Hayek, Robert Musil, and on and on. Maybe the Circle’s most noted philosopher, Rudolph Carnap, produced seminal works on the logical structure of science, treating logic as the connective tissue of scientific reasoning, separate from its content.
Sigmund’s telling of the tale of the Circle is historical much more so than philosophical per se. He rarely enters into in-depth philosophical discussions or criticism of the positions taken by members of the Circle, but rather a history of those positions, debates surrounding them, the Circle’s historical context, and the personal histories of its members.
All of those dimensions have interesting, entertaining, and curious aspects, including professional jealousies and competitiveness, personal and political agendas, and even murder (the shooting of Schlick by his former student, Johann Nelböck). Neurath in particular was a bigger-than-life character and probably pushed the Circle closest to political issues and positions.
And of course, the collision between the Circle and the Anschluss in 1938 scrambled the careers, personal lives, and in some cases the political convictions of the Circle’s members. The Circle did survive the war, but the Nazification of Austria and its intellectual life meant that a number of the Circle’s members would lose their academic positions, face political and personal pressures, and in some cases, become refugees.
Sigmund is not a philosopher (he is a mathematician), so I’m not going to fault him too strongly for not engaging in philosophical points with a critical eye.
I think it would be interesting, though, to go more deeply into an important tension in the thinking of members of the Circle, Carnap in particular. Those two principal tenets of the “scientific worldview” held, on the one hand, that scientific knowledge be grounded in observation, and on the other that philosophical metaphysics was not just a waste of time, but literally meaningless exactly because it was not grounded in the kind of observations and statements about them that scientific knowledge was grounded in. It’s one thing, though, to make a claim about the grounding of scientific knowledge and very much another to claim that anything that doesn’t adhere to the defining criterion of scientific knowledge is literally nonsense. If correct, that latter claim would seem to brand not only philosophical metaphysics but probably most of what people say when they speak as gibberish.
As it turns out of course, this narrow view of language and meaning was part of the criticism that Wittgenstein leveled against his own earlier work (the Tractatus), which was revered by many within the Circle, in his later thinking (represented by his Philosophical Investigations) and distanced him increasingly from the thinking of the Circle.
Readers should be aware that the relatively casual but caustic dismissals of thinkers of a different vein than the Circle’s members — e.g., Hegel, Heidegger, Feyerabend, even Kant — should not be taken at face value. Carnap’s famous paper on the The Elimination of Metaphysics Through the Logical Analysis of Language — a polemical attack on Heidegger’s metaphysics — is, at least to my reading, a paradigm of philosophical non-engagement.
That said, I definitely recommend the book, as an historical account of the Vienna Circle if not a philosophical treatment of the positions taken by its members. For a book of intellectual history, it reads very fluidly (partly due to Sigmund’s having translated his own German edition into English, with help from Douglas Hofstadter). I had wanted to know much more of the facts about the Circle, its own history and its place in the broader history of its time, and about the members personally. I got that.
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