*PHILOSOPHICAL PAPERS 1913-1946* by Otto Neurath (pdf) cominsitu.files.wordpress.com
"Many of us, besides myself, have been brought up in a Machian tradition. Because of this, we tried to pass from chemistry to biology, from mechanics to sociology without altering the language applied to them."
-- Otto Neurath, on Mach + neo-Kantian + Wittgenstein program
-- Otto Neurath, on Mach + neo-Kantian + Wittgenstein program
The program was a total failure, the closest thing to a survivor is Alex Rosenberg and Patricia Churchland's eliminative materialism, some version of which reject all science and talk except quantum mechanics and particle physics.
Carnap and Rosenberg have a false criterion for science and objective talk which does not fit any science and which makes nonsense of language and science and our everyday understanding. Neurath attempted to retain and vindicate the false prediction & control model of science ..
by turning the program to mush with an everyday object & action ontology and a holism that allowed him to excuse anything the logical empiricist said or claimed. Neurath continued to claim results which required the machinery his own additions made nonsensical & substance-less.
"Of all the refinements Carnap brought to us, one point impressed me especially, namely, that we should not only distinguish between sentences we want to use and those we want to eliminate, but also between sentences we want to eliminate because they are contradictory .. 1/2
.. and those we want to eliminate because they do not fit into our scientific language at all, 'meaningless' sentences within the language in question." -- Otto Neurath 2/2
"The Machian suggestion of one scientific language, supplemented by Camap and others, formed the backbone of my scientific attempt to do something for the 'unification' of our scientific enterprise." 1/5
"As a sociologist I disliked all this talk about 'the national spirit,' 'mentality of a ruler,' etc. Why should we not speak here in the same simple way as in the laboratory? And, as an empiricist I asked myself how we might start from simple observation statements .. 2/5
.. on which to base all further scientific discussions. So I developed my suggestions dealing with 'protocol-statements'. I disliked starting from a vague statement of 'something red' floating somewhere in the air and therefore I asked for a more exact formulation." 3/5
"Such a formulation always gives the name of the 'protocolist' first and then adds his sayings. "Charles told us he had seen a red table in his room on March 4th" seemed to me a fair start, which enabled us to ask the question, "When, where, and how?" which we are .. 4/5
.. accustomed to ask when we make an astro- nomical or chemical statement. With one stroke, I thought, I could overcome a certain cleavage always felt when scientists want to pass from 'sensual elements' to descriptive statements on stars and stones." -- Otto Neurath 5/5
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