How the Cold War Transformed Philosophy of Science: To the Icy Slopes of Logic

This intriguing and ground-breaking book is the first in-depth study of the development of philosophy of science in the United States during the Cold War. It documents the political vitality of logical empiricism and Otto Neurath’s Unity of Science Movement when these projects emigrated to the US in the 1930s and follows their de-politicization by a convergence of intellectual, cultural and political forces in the 1950s. Students of logical empiricism and the Vienna Circle treat these as strictly intellectual non-political projects. In fact, the refugee philosophers of science were highly active politically and debated questions about values inside and outside science, as a result of which their philosophy of science was scrutinized politically both from within and without the profession, by such institutions as J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI. It will prove absorbing reading to philosophers and historians of science, intellectual historians, and scholars of Cold War studies.

• First in-depth study of the development of philosophy of science in the US during the Cold War • Based on extensive archival research • Will appeal to a wide swathe of readership, including those interested in philosophy of science, cold war studies and intellectual history

1. An introduction to logical empiricism and the Unity of Science Movement in the Cold War; 2. Otto Neurath, Rudolf Carnap, Charles Morris and Philipp Frank: political philosophers of science; 3. Leftist philosophy of science in America and the reception of logical empiricism in New York City; 4. ‘Doomed in advance to defeat’? John Dewey on reductionism, values and the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science; 5. Red philosophy of science: Blumberg, Malisoff, Somerville and early philosophy of science; 6. The view from the left: logical empiricism and radical philosophers; 7. The view from the far left: logical empiricism and communist philosophers; 8. Postwar disillusionment, anti-intellectualism, and the values debate; 9. Horace Kallen’s attack on the unity of science; 10. Creeping totalitarianism, creeping scholasticism: Neurath, Frank, and the trouble with semantics; 11. Frank’s neurathian crusade: science, enlightenment, and values; 12. ‘A very fertile field for investigation’: anticollectivism and anticommunism in popular and academic culture; 13. Anticommunism investigations, loyalty oaths, and the wrath of Sidney Hook; 14. Competing programs for postwar philosophy of science; 15. Freedom celebrated: the professional decline of Philipp Frank and the Unity of Science Movement; 16. The marginalization of Charles Morris; 17. Values, axioms and the icy slopes of logic; 18. Professionalism, power and what might have been.

‘… extremely interesting and timely … This is a book that will have an impact, both among philosophers, and beyond.’

– Elliott Sober, Stanford University