LOGICAL POSITIVISM

positivisme

Orientation philosophique qui se fonde uniquement sur des faits expérimentés, refusant toute métaphysique. Les premiers représentants du positivisme furent David Hume, Jean d'Alembert et Turgot ; sa première systématisation fut réalisée par Auguste Comte. Par sa vision du monde et ses méthodes, le positivisme est très proche des sciences naturelles.

Le néopositivisme, représenté notamment par Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein et le Cercle de Vienne (Moritz Schlick, Rudolf Carnap), comprend toujours l'expérience comme expérience empirique des sens, qui peut être décrite sans équivoque, à l'aide d'un système logistique de symboles.

The Tractatus quickly became famous. Oddly enough, though it was itself highly metaphysical, as well as austerely logical, its most enthusiastic admirers were the anti-metaphysical positivists of the Vienna Circle. This group, which grew up round Moritz Schlick after his appointment as Professor of the Philosophy of Science in Vienna in 1922, consisted of philosophers, mathematicians, and scientists; among its members were Friedrich Waismann, Rudolf Carnap, and Otto Neurath. In 1929, after a congress in Prague, the circle issued a manifesto, the Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung der Wiener Kreis, which proclaimed the launch of a campaign    against metaphysics as an outdated precursor of science. The ideas of the circle were publicized in the journal Erkenntnis, founded in 1930 and edited by Carnap in conjunction with Hans Reichenbach of Berlin. The circle was broken up in 1939 as a result of political pressure, after Schlick had been killed by an insane student.