Carnap, Rudolf
Carnap, Rudolf
(1891-) successively Privatdozent at the University of Vienna, Professor of Philosophy at the German University of Prague, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago (since 1936); one of the leading representatives of the positivism of the Vienna Circle and subsequently of Scientific Empiricism (q.v.); co-editor of The Journal of Unified Science (previouslyErkenntnis).
Carnap’s work has been devoted especially to formal logic and its applications to problems of epistemology and the philosophy of science. His writings in formal logic include a textbook of mathematical logic and a comprehensive monograph devoted to logical syntax, a new branch of logical research to whose development Carnap has greatly contributed.
In his logical work, he has been specially interested in the nature of mathematics and its relation to logic. He has treated these topics in a number of special articles and in a monograph. The latter also includes an introduction to the youngest field of modern logic, semantics.
Carnap’s contributions to the study of epistemological and philosophical problems may be characterized as applications of the methods of logical analysis to the languages of everyday life and of science. His books contain applications to the fundamental problems of epistemology, expound the principles of physicalism (q.v.) which was developed by Carnap and Neurath and which offers, amongst others, a basis for a more cautious version of the ideas of older behaviorism and for the construction of one common unified language for all branches of empirical science (see Unity of Science). Main worksLogische Aufblou der Welt; Abriss der Logistik; Logische Syntax der Sprache “Testability and Meaning,” Phil. of Sci. (1916). — C.G.H.