Minerva (2007) 45:357–360 Ó Springer 2007

DOI 10.1007/s11024-007-9048-9

Review

‘LOGICAL EMPIRICISM’ AND THE PHILOSOPHY

OF SCIENCE

George Reisch, How the Cold War Transformed Philosophy of Science: To

the Icy Slopes of Logic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), xiv
+ 418 pp., ISBN 0-521-83797-9

‘Philosophy of science’ suggests to many a highly technical project

that offers logical analyses of scientific and metascientific terms – a
perspective that may not greatly appeal to historians, sociologists,
or scientists. This image of philosophy of science owes much to a
common understanding of logical empiricism (née positivism), a
project that seemed to attempt to force all of science, and all of
our understanding of science, into the Procrustean bed of formal
logic.
George Reisch laments this vision of the philosophy of science,
and seeks to complicate it in a novel way, by arguing that logical
empiricism might have bequeathed to us a very different philoso-
phy of science. In so doing, he conducts us through a history of
logical empiricism in its European phase during the 1920s and
1930s. He recovers the socialist agenda then at the heart of logical
empiricism, and notes its alliances with progressivist wings in early
twentieth-century American philosophy. He then offers a history of
the technical and apolitical project that philosophy of science has
become. As the title telegraphs, Reisch argues that the Cold
War led the logical empiricists – many of them immigrants from
Germany or Austria, often Jewish, and often with socialist
leanings – away from their youthful political engagement, towards
philosophical isolationism.
That there is an important political history to the philosophy of
science in the twentieth century is largely unknown to many in the
profession. Most philosophers of science tacitly endorse a ‘liberal
neutralist’ account of science: they believe that scientific knowledge
358 ALAN RICHARDSON

is important exactly because, by serving no political ends in itself, it

can serve as a disinterested input into political decision-making.
Often implicit, this commitment becomes visible as righteous indig-
nation when, for example, philosophers of science think they hear
sociologists saying that scientific evidence merely disguises political
power and ambition, or when they perceive ‘faith-based’ people
seeking to force Intelligent Design into high school curricula.
Since his early work on the relations between Thomas Kuhn and
logical empiricism, George Reisch has been one of the most inter-
esting and scholarly of researchers working in the history of the
discipline.1 He reminds us that, in the 1920s and 1930s, philoso-
phers of science theorized and promoted the political roles of sci-
ence more richly than they have of late. His premier example is
Otto Neurath’s vision of ‘unified science’.
Neurath (1882–1945) was a member of the Vienna Circle, a
prominent socialist, and a leader in the visual representation of sta-
tistical information as a form of public education. He was also an
economic planner who, in 1919, served in the governments of the
short-lived Soviet Republic of Bavaria. His philosophy of science
included the promotion of an international effort to unify the
sciences in support of ‘planning for freedom’.2
Reisch indicates the ways in which, in the 1930s, when many
logical empiricists emigrated to America, Neurath’s vision was
attractive, and the ways in which it was unattractive to John
Dewey and his followers (Neurath himself finished his life in the
United Kingdom). The decline into isolation and irrelevance of log-
ical empiricism is, for Reisch, largely the story of the decline of
Neurath’s International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, in favour
of the more technical projects that logical empiricist philosophers
of science, such as Hans Reichenbach, Rudolf Carnap, and Carl
Hempel, favoured.3
Reisch, unlike most of the scholars currently interested in the
history of the philosophy of science, has professional training in
history. He draws his account of the pressures of the Cold War
1
George Reisch, ‘Did Kuhn Kill Logical Empiricism?’, Philosophy of Science, 58 (2), (1991),
264–277.
2
Otto Neurath, ‘International Planning for Freedom’, in Marie Neurath and Robert S. Cohen
(eds.), Otto Neurath: Empiricism and Sociology (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1973), 422–440.
3
For examples of such projects, see Hans Reichenbach, Philosophical Foundations of Quantum
Mechanics (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1944); Rudolf Carnap,
The Logical Foundations of Probability (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1950); and Carl
G. Hempel, Aspects of Scientific Explanation and other Essays in the Philosophy of Science (New
York: The Free Press, 1965).
 ‘LOGICAL EMPIRICISM’ AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE 359

from the lives of such prominent figures as Carnap and Philipp

Frank and from archival research, through his use of the US
Freedom of Information Act to delve into FBI files. Reisch’s
research reveals that the first editor of Philosophy of Science, the
biochemist William Malisoff, was a Soviet operative. Reisch pro-
vides rich examples of both public and private ways in which Cold
Warriors within philosophy – such as Sidney Hook – put pressure
on logical empiricists – such as Neurath and Carnap – to mend
their ways. The political context within which the profession
emerged in the United States of America has never before been so
compellingly presented.
However, the conceptual issues at stake in this history might have
been better delineated. The fault here is primarily Neurath’s, whose
philosophical points of view are, even for specialists, opaque. Reisch
emphasizes the pluralism and anti-absolutism in Neurath’s project.
He is concerned that readers fully understand both the ‘unified sci-
ence’ that was Neurath’s goal, and the metaphysics that he rejected.
I am uncertain that the book will completely enlighten readers on
these matters. For example, they may be unable adequately to evalu-
ate the point at issue between Neurath and the cultural pluralist and
political Zionist, Horace Kallen, in their argument over whether
Neurath’s vision of unified science was – Kallen’s word – ‘totalitar-
ian’ (p. 167). His rather hysterical use of the word notwithstanding,
Kallen, it seems to me, was not unjustified in suggesting that Neu-
rath’s model entailed that the beliefs and commitments of orthodox
Jews were theoretically meaningless. If this is so, then Neurath’s
view is not as tolerant as Kallen would demand, given his cultural
pluralism. A reader might wish to know where the limits of
Neurath’s scientific-cum-political tolerance were fixed, and why.
Moreover, I am not certain what Neurath meant by ‘political’
and, therefore, what alternative future for the philosophy of science
Reisch would like to promote. He shows that political leftists
among contemporary pluralists in the philosophy of science (such
as John Dupré, p. 374) offer accounts of ‘unified science’ that
unwittingly reproduce the arguments of Kallen against Neurath.
This suggests that they are drawn to the cultural pluralism of
Kallen, Alain Locke, or, indeed, William James – and not to the
‘mosaic of the sciences’ on offer from Neurath. Why should they
change their minds after reading Reisch’s book? What specific
advice, for example, would Neurath (or Reisch) provide regarding
the interrelations of science and politics in, say, the teaching of
360 ALAN RICHARDSON

Intelligent Design, or the alleged interference in science by the cur-

rent US administration?4
Reisch ends the book by lamenting the loss of ambition in the
philosophy of science, noting how Neurath’s project sought ‘to
help realize a more scientifically and epistemically informed public,
and possibly a more peaceful, economically stable and just world’
(p. 388). The current lack of strong philosophical voices in public
debate (in North America, certainly) is, I agree, lamentable. But
such voices will be heard only if philosophers have some clear sense
of what to say.
Reisch’s book might embolden philosophers of science to begin
anew their debate about the kind of contribution they should make
to public discourse and political action. However, despite his ‘sympa-
thy’ (p. xiii) for Neurath, Frank, and Charles Morris – and his antip-
athy towards other philosophers of science – Reisch’s book does not
give enough guidance to frame that debate. Perhaps, given that the
climate for free thought, amidst the unending ‘war on terror’, seems
to be declining, what is most important is that such a debate should
take place. For his aid in the cause of serious and substantial discus-
sion among philosophers of science about their public roles and
responsibilities, we owe Reisch a great debt of gratitude.

ALAN RICHARDSON

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alan Richardson is a Professor of Philosophy and Distinguished

University Scholar at the University of British Columbia. He is au-
thor of Carnap’s Construction of the World (Cambridge University
Press, 1997) and co-editor with Gary Hardcastle of Logical Empiri-
cism in North America (University of Minnesota Press, 2003).

Department of Philosophy
University of British Columbia
1866 Main Mall – E370
Vancouver, BC
Canada V6T 1Z1
E-mail: alanr@interchange.ubc.ca
4
Allegations of Bush administration interference in science are many: prominent examples are
Donald Kennedy, ‘An Epidemic of Politics’, Science, 299 (2003), 625, and Daniel Smith,
‘Political Science’, New York Times Magazine, 4 September 2005, 36–41.