T HE STATUS QUAESTIONIS

1. T HE STATUS QUAESTIONIS

During the discussion between D. Howard and T. Oberdan at the 1991 Confer- ence, organized in Konstanz for the centenary of Carnap’s and Reichenbach’s

birth, the following question was posed: is it possible to see Schlick’s Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre as an anticipation of the theses that later characterized the

Vienna Circle (which was formed around Schlick himself) and that were formu- lated by its members taking into consideration also Russell’s and Wittgenstein’s ideas? 1

This question refers to the existence of a first Vienna Circle and the nature of the relationship between this first group and the ‘real’ Vienna Circle. T. Uebel has re-examined this second question in a paper recently presented at the Floren-

tine conference on Logical Empiricism (1999). Looking at it from an interesting perspective, he aims at singling out the characteristics of Logical Empiricism as

a distinctive school of philosophical thought. More precisely, he asks himself whether it was simply another version of neo-Kantian philosophy and, if not, what other elements were present. In order to provide an answer, he discusses again the relationship between the Austrian and German-Kantian components underlying the movement and links his paper to the recent debate on the distinc-

tion between analytic and continental philosophy. According to Uebel, “it was the co-operation of the members” of the “early circle of philosophically minded Austrian scientists – the mathematician Hans Hahn, the physicist Philipp Frank and the economist Otto Neurath – with the scientifically trained German philosophers Moritz Schlick and Rudolf Carnap that accounted for the distinctive force of Viennese Logical Empiricism”. This can be clearly seen – he states – when we look at the positions taken by Schlick

in the Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre (1918 1 , 1925 2 ). Uebel explicitly says, though, that in his reconstruction he does not take into consideration the Berlin strand of Logical Empiricism 2 .

I intend here to discuss this very same set of questions showing how the analysis of the evolution of the ideas of the main member of the Berlin Circle –

H. Reichenbach – and thus of the more German branch of the neo-empiricist movement, can bring to light some interesting elements. Important indications can be found in the philosophy of geometry he developed in Philosophie der

10 P AOLO P ARRINI

Raum-Zeit-Lehre (1928). More precisely, I will try to show that the analysis of the debate on Kantism that divided Reichenbach and Schlick in the early 1920s

at the time of their discussion on the theory of relativity, and the analysis of Reichenbach’s subsequent change of perspective on the nature of “coordinative

principles” are enlightening on two relevant points that are closely related to Howard’s, Oberdan’s and Uebel’s above-mentioned interpretations: (i) the rela-

tionship between Kantism and Conventionalism within Logical Empiricism; (ii) the role played by typically neo-empiricistic ideas such as the verification prin- ciple and the thesis of the tautological nature of logic – ideas which are more of an ‘analytic’ than of a ‘continental’ nature – regarding the possibility of using French Conventionalism in a strictly neo-empiricistic sense and not in a neo- Kantian one.

My final goal is to show that we cannot understand Logical Empiricism’s development if, as traditional interpretations did, we focus our attention only on the positions developed under the influence of Russell’s and Wittgenstein’s ideas, thereby ignoring the Kantian and Conventionalist heritage of the move- ment. On the other hand, in order to show the importance of these components, we must not overlook the ‘other half of the apple’: the conceptual reorganisation brought about by a reconsideration of some old problems in light of the new theoretical approach linked to the coming to the fore of some theses (verification principle and linguistic theory of the a priori) which are the consequence of the impact of Russell’s and Wittgenstein’s ideas interpreted from an empiricistic perspective.