Scientific worldview in the distraught world

Arena Vanyan - about the book of Karl Sigmund dedicated to the Viennese mug

It is not easy to preserve and defend a sober and rational view of the world. And even more it is difficult to do this in a strange and crazy time when this very world is a step away from the disaster, and aggression and anti -Semitism grow around. At least half of its history, the Viennese circle existed in such circumstances. Therefore, the story of him inevitably becomes exciting and dramatic - even despite the slowness of the narrative characteristic of the book of Karl Sigmund, about which Avenue Vanyan talks as part of the joint project “Gorky” and “Enlightener”.

Karl Sigmund. Accurate thinking in crazy times. Viennese circle and crusade on the grounds of science. M.: Corpus, 2020. Translation from English Anastasia Brodotskaya

The Vienna circle is the unification of philosophers and scientists that existed in Vienna in the 20-30s of the last century. The circle was the world center of logical positivism - a philosophical direction that promoted a scientific worldview. The Vienna circle influenced the intellectual and scientific history of the twentieth century, determining the course of analytical philosophy, formal logic and economic theory. The ideas formulated by members of the circle have largely changed the world in which we live. For example, algorithms and computer programs go back to the abstract research of Bertrand Russell, Rudolf Karnap and Kurt Gödel according to symbolic logic and computability.

The book of a professor of mathematics of the University of Vienna Karl Sigmund grew out of the exhibition catalog dedicated to the Vienna circle, which he oversaw. This affected the plot - we learn the history of the circle smoothly and chronologically, passing by strictly ordered thematic expositions: here is the history of the origin of the circle, and here is the atmosphere of the vein after the First World War; Here are biographies of key participants, and here is the fate of the circle after Anschlus.

The narrative proceeds so slowly that only on the 147th page, having described in detail the scientific, cultural and political moods of the veins before, during and after the First World War, Sigmund finally reports in one small paragraph that in 1922 Moritsa Schlik persuaded him to arrange a private seminar on the philosophy of science. So the slalit circle was born- Schlick-Zirkel , which was an early, black version of the famous mug. And the official year of the birth of the Viennese circle is considered to be 1924, when Schlick-Zirkel was led by two more charismatic figures: mathematician Hans Gan and sociologist Otto Neurat. Every Thursday at six in the evening in a small audience of Vienna University, a circle arranged his meetings. The essence of the discussions occurring in it was reduced to the question of the foundations of science.

The audience in which the participants of the circle gathered was on the street named after the Austrian physicist Ludwig Bolzman. There is a share of symbolism, since the circle developed ideas laid down in the philosophical dialogue of the two titans of the science of the XIX - XX centuries: one of them was Ludwig Bolzman, and the other - Ernst Mah (they argued on the existence of atoms). The circle also experienced a great influence of large thinkers of his era: the physicist of Albert Einstein, mathematics David Gilbert, the philosophers of Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein (the latter, among other things, can be called the most capricious participant in the meetings). The core of the circle was the most brilliant young scientists of those years: philosophers Rudolf Karnap and Friedrich Weisman, mathematicians Karl Menger and Kurt Gödel, physicist Philip Frank, etc.

Sigmund deliberately emphasizes that for the Vienna circle the organization of its leaders and the near -scientific information campaigns held by them played an important role. Each of the founders of the circle had its own role. Moritz Schlick was his chief leader, Hans Gan was the inspirer, and Otto Neurat was the most politicized of the participants, her “Sailz Manager”. It was the neurat, as well as the young Rudolf Karnapu, belonged to the idea of a public promotion of the circle, which resulted in writing the manifesto. In 1929, 5 years after the founding, they co -authored with Gan wrote and published a campaign pamphlet entitled “ Scientific World Modernation ”. So the world first learned about the new philosophical school. As Sigmund observes, this text still has no equal description of the history and tasks of the Viennese circle.

The Manifesto of the Vienna School was not very different in essence from many other scientific and artistic manifestos of the early twentieth century. It was most important for its authors to designate the very fact that there was a close -knit group of people who celebrate old values and proclaims a symbol of the new faith: “Scientific worldview of the close life of modern life”, “Scientific worldview does not know any insoluble puzzles,” “Scientific worldview serves life, and life accepts it”, etc. The task of philosophical work is to clarify traditional philosophical problems, and not at all in creating one’s own statements. And therefore, the main enemy of the circle was declared metaphysics. The passionate rejection of Plato, Kant, Heidegger raised Austrian thinkers. It was unpleasant to German idealism with all its inherent vagueness (including for political reasons).

Of course, not all participants in the circle were satisfied with the manifesto. Hans Gan, although it was indicated by the co -author, put his signature only from the compromise with the rest. Moritz Schlik was generally on vacation when the manifesto was written, and did not agree with the radical style of presentation. In less than a year, both Gan and Schlok will write their independent scientific manifestos. But Wittgenstein, of course, was indignant most of all. "" Refusal of metaphysics! " Also me, a new thought! He wrote in a letter to Weisman. “Any self -praise from the philosophical school is vile, like any self -praise in general.”

In addition to the propaganda brochure, the circle armed himself with his own magazine, his own book series, his own conferences and, no less important, his own catchy name. It was when working on the manifesto neurat - a man of absolutely Leninist grip - invented the name “Viennese circle”, which, in his thought, should have caused pleasant associations with the Vienna waltz, Viennese forest, etc.

If the 1920s is a time of uncontrollable heyday of accurate thinking in Vienna, then the 1930s, as Sigmund shows, is the time of rapid insanity. This was influenced by two historical events: Hitler’s coming to power in Germany in 1933 and the Civil War, which struck Austria in 1934 and put an end to the political hopes of the left. Anti -Semitism and contempt for socialism gained move. Many participants in the circle were Jews or adhered to the left glance and therefore were forced to leave the country. Rudolf Karnap left for Prague, Otto Neurat to Hague. And back in 1933, Hans Gan suddenly died of cancer. The work of the Viennese circle completely and completely fell on the shoulders of Moritsa Schlik. However, in 1936, right on the stairs of the University of Vienna, he was shot by a young man suffering from paranoia. The public remained indifferent to the death of Shlite, since it has long been perceived as Judenfreund - a friend of Jews. In the next two years, Austria also left Karl Menger, Karl Popper and Friedrich Weisman. The last meeting of the mug participants took place in January 1938 in the house of the historian of science Edgar Tsilsel. The mathematician Kurt Gödel read a report on logical consistency, but there was not a single person in the room who could understand the complex reasoning of Gödel. The best minds of Austria have already left her. Two more months later, in March 1938, Anschlus occurred.

After the war, one of the most modest and quiet participants in the disappeared circle, the seventy -year -old philosopher Victor Kraft, created a new circle with his students, simultaneously proclaiming: "The work of the Vienna circle was not completed, it was interrupted." The new circle did not last long and was rather a tribute to the past. His most significant event was the sudden visit of a man who forever butt with the participants of the old circle, - Ludwig Wittgenstein. He came an hour after the start of the next meeting, listened to a couple of minutes from the report of the young and unknown student Paul Feuramand and interrupted him with the words “Stop it! So it will not work. " Then he took his place and gave a lecture for young crowns. Among his listeners was the writer Ingeborg Bakhman, who then wrote a radio company about the Viennese circle.

In the last chapter, Sigmund emphasizes that, not counting this initiative of craft, nothing was done in the post -war Austria to correct the main intellectual mistake of the last 15 years. None of the former participants of the circle received an official invitation to return back to the country. The philosophers who remained in their homeland, but were supporters of the ideas of the Viennese circle, did not receive philosophical departments and other privileges (but they were received by the resurrected metaphysics). All memoirs, as well as the first important books about the Viennese circle, were published not in German, but in English: largely because the surviving participants settled in the UK and the USA. Sigmund is not looking for an explanation of why this happened. He only observes: "It seems that the Viennese circle was highly appreciated everywhere except Austria."

Sigmund's book has its small flaws. This, on the one hand, is superficial in the retelling of biographies of participants in the circle (which is inevitable for sightseeing popular science books), and on the other, a large scatter of story branches dedicated to the state of exact sciences: mathematics, logic, physics, etc. It was worth telling three paragraphs about the content of Principia Mathematica Whitehead and Russell, if this is still impossible in three paragraphs?

But these shortcomings do not reduce the values of the work done. If only because the best sightseeing book about the history and ideas of the Viennese circle is hardly possible today.