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This latest volume in the longest-standing and most influential series in the field of the philosophy of science extends and expands on the discipline’s recent historical turn. These essays take up the historical, sociological, and philosophical questions surrounding the particular intellectual movement of logical empiricism—both its emigration from Europe to North America in the 1930s and 1940s and its development in North America through the 1940s and 1950s. With an introduction placing them in their philosophical and historical context, these essays bear witness to the fact that the history of the philosophy of science, far more than a mere repository of anecdote and chronology, might be able to produce a decisive transformation in the philosophy of science itself.

Contributors: Richard Creath, Arizona State U; Michael Friedman, Stanford U; Rudolf Haller, U of Graz; Don Howard, Notre Dame; Diederick Raven, U of Utrecht; George Reisch; Thomas Ricketts, Northwestern U; Friedrich K. Stadler, U of Vienna; Thomas E. Uebel, U of Manchester. 

Establishes a historical framework for the study of logical empiricism. Logical empiricism remains a strong influence in the philosophy of science, despite the discipline's shift toward more historical and naturalistic approaches. This latest volume in the eminent Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science series examines the main features of the intellectual milieu from which logical empiricism sprang, providing the first critical exploration of this context by authors within the Anglo-American analytic tradition of philosophy. These articles challenge the idea that logical empiricism has its origins in traditional British empiricism, pointing instead to a movement of scientific philosophy that flourished in the German-speaking areas of Europe in the first four decades of the twentieth century. The intellectual refugees from the Third Reich who brought logical empiricism to North America did so in an environment influenced by Einstein's new physics, the ascension of modern logic, the birth of the social sciences as rivals to traditional humanistic philosophy, and other large-scale social, political, and cultural themes. The contributors, including some of our most distinguished philosophers and historians of science, emphasize the connections among members of the logical empiricist movement as well as their connections with members of other major intellectual movements of the time. Focusing on the continuing influence of logical empiricism and the vitality of the issues with which its proponents struggled, this important volume provides valuable context to contemporary philosophers of science. Contributors: Nancy Cartwright, Jordi Cat, Richard Creath, Michael Friedman, Peter Galison, Warren Goldfarb, Don Howard, Thomas Oberdan, Thomas Ricketts, Thomas Ryckman, Joia Lewis Turner, Thomas E. Uebel. Ronald N. Giere is professor of philosophy and director of the Center for the Philosophy of Science at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of Explaining Science (1988) and editor of Cognitive Models of Science (1992). Alan Richardson is assistant professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia.

The achievement of unity and perfection in human action begins with a struggle for these ideals in human thought. Dr. Klaus Vondung in his collection of essays that span four decades explores examples of this in different fields of human inquiry: striving for harmonious existential unity of talents and morals, intellect and emotion; seeking to make natural sciences consonant with the humanities and thereby moving toward a more universal, “perfect” science; and establishing unity in political structures and cultivating in this unity a homogenous society. Vondung devotes himself especially to exposing National Socialism, and revisits its perverted motivations and the murderous consequences of its ideology.
     Particular focus in following the thread of unity and perfection in human intellectual and practical ambitions ultimately hones in on the combination of religion and politics. Vondung in these essays unpacks the ways in which this continues to fascinate and disturb us, and in his expertise he uses National Socialism to connect this pursuit of unity and perfection to what he calls one of the signature marks of modernity––namely, secular apocalypticism. This claim stands in opposition to Eric Voegelin’s remark that Gnosticism, rather, is “the nature of modernity.” Vondung, who studied and wrote his dissertation under Voegelin, grapples with the contrast of these positions. Vondung is willing to challenge Voegelin, but ultimately his treatment of the latter bears the quality of tribute to this great scholar.
      Vondung also explores the points of contact between apocalypticism and Hermetic speculation. Despite the independence of the religious and philosophical doctrines of Hermeticism, there are parallels to be found. Apocalypticism and Hermeticism originated in antiquity and yet each represents a tradition that still holds footing today. Vondung furthermore leads the reader to see the project of salvation found in both even as each operates with a different scope.
     This collection of essays centers itself on a perspective of the human pursuit of unity and perfection, directly or indirectly, as objectives of intellectual endeavors, existential ideals, as social or political outcomes, and in the case of National Socialism even as perverse aberrations that led to the Holocaust. Vondung’s particular treatment of Voegelin’s work likewise establishes what the former identifies as a stand-out question of this study: Does the search for order in history show us the unity of the history of humankind?