---
title: "Vienna Circle"
chunk: 2/6
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna_Circle"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:37:41.365102+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== Public phase – Schlick Circle and Verein Ernst Mach (1928–1934) ===
In 1928 the Verein Ernst Mach (Ernst Mach Society) was founded, with Schlick as its chairman. The aim of the society was the spreading of a "scientific world conception" through public lectures that were in large part held by members of the Vienna Circle.
In 1929 the Vienna Circle made its first public appearance under this name – invented by Neurath – with the publication of its manifesto Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung. Der Wiener Kreis (The Scientific Conception of the World. The Vienna Circle also known as Viewing the World Scientifically: The Vienna Circle) The pamphlet is dedicated to Schlick, and its preface was signed by Hahn, Neurath and Carnap.
The manifesto was presented at the Tagung für Erkenntnislehre der exakten Wissenschaften (Conference on the Epistemology of the Exact Sciences) in autumn 1929, organized by the Vienna Circle together with the Berlin Circle. This conference was the first international appearance of logical empiricism (Neurath coined the term in 1931 in his article "Physikalismus") and the first of a number of conferences: Königsberg (1930), Prague (1934), Paris (1935), Copenhague (1936), Cambridge, UK (1938), Cambridge, Mass. (1939), and Chicago (1941).
While primarily known for its views on the natural sciences and metaphysics, the public phase of the Vienna Circle was explicitly political. Neurath and Hahn were both socialists and believed the rejection of magic was a necessary component for liberation of the working classes. The manifesto linked Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche to their political and anti-metaphysical views, indicating a blur between what are now considered two separate schools of contemporary philosophy – analytic philosophy and continental philosophy.
In 1930 the Vienna Circle and the Berlin Society took over the journal Annalen der Philosophie and made it the main journal of logical empiricism under the title Erkenntnis, edited by Carnap and Reichenbach. In addition, the Vienna Circle published a number of book series: Schriften zur wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung (Monographs on the Scientific World-Conception, ed. by Schlick und Frank, 1928–1937), Einheitswissenschaft (Unified Science, edited by Neurath, 1933–1939), and later the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science (edited by Neurath, Carnap and Charles W. Morris, 1938–1970).

=== Disintegration, emigration, internationalization (1934–1938) ===
From the beginning of the 1930s the first signs of disintegration appeared for political and racist reasons: Herbert Feigl left Austria in 1930. Carnap was appointed to a chair at Prague University in 1931 and left for Chicago in 1935.
1934 marks an important break: Hahn died after surgery, Neurath fled to Holland because of the victory of Austrofascism in the Austrian Civil War following which the Ernst Mach Society was dissolved for political reasons by the Schuschnigg regime.
The murder of Moritz Schlick by the former student Hans Nelböck for political and personal reasons in 1936 set an end to the meetings of the Schlick Circle.
Some members of the circle such as Kraft, Waismann, Zilsel, Menger and Gomperz continued to meet occasionally. But the annexation of Austria to Nazi Germany in 1938 meant the definite end of the activities of the Vienna Circle in Austria.
With the emigration went along the internationalization of logical empiricism. Many former members of the Vienna Circle and the Berlin Circle emigrated to the English-speaking world where they had some influence on the development of philosophy of science. The unity of science movement for the construction of an International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, promoted mainly by Neurath, Carnap, and Morris, is symptomatic of the internationalization of logical empiricism, organizing numerous international conferences and the publication of the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science.

=== Overview of the members ===
Apart from the central figures of the Schlick Circle the question of membership in the Vienna Circle is in many cases unsettled. The partition into "members" and "those sympathetic to the Vienna Circle" produced in the manifesto from 1929 is representative only of a specific moment in the development of the Circle. Depending on the criteria used (regular attendance, philosophical affinities etc.) there are different possible distributions in "inner circle" and "periphery".
In the following list (in alphabetical order), the "inner circle" is defined using the criterion of regular attendance. The "periphery" comprises occasional visitors, foreign visitors and leading intellectual figures who stood in regular contact with the Circle (such as Wittgenstein and Popper).
Inner Circle: Gustav Bergmann, Rudolf Carnap, Herbert Feigl, Philipp Frank, Kurt Gödel, Hans Hahn, Olga Hahn-Neurath, Béla Juhos, Felix Kaufmann, Victor Kraft, Karl Menger, Richard von Mises, Otto Neurath, Rose Rand, Josef Schächter, Moritz Schlick, Friedrich Waismann, Edgar Zilsel.
Periphery: Alfred Jules Ayer, Egon Brunswik, Karl Bühler, Josef Frank, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Heinrich Gomperz, Carl Gustav Hempel, Eino Kaila, Hans Kelsen, Charles W. Morris, Arne Naess, Karl Raimund Popper, Willard Van Orman Quine, Frank P. Ramsey, Hans Reichenbach, Kurt Reidemeister, Alfred Tarski, Olga Taussky-Todd, Ludwig Wittgenstein.

=== Reception in the United States and the United Kingdom ===
The spread of logical positivism in the United States occurred throughout the 1920s and 1930s. In 1929 and in 1932, Schlick was a visiting professor at Stanford, while Feigl, who immigrated to the United States in 1930, became lecturer (1931) and professor (1933) at the University of Iowa. The definite diffusion of logical positivism in the United States was due to Carl Hempel, Hans Reichenbach, Rudolf Carnap, Philipp Frank, and Herbert Feigl, who emigrated and taught in the United States.
Another link to the United States is Willard Van Orman Quine, who traveled in 1932 and 1933 as a Sheldon Traveling Fellow to Vienna, Prague, and Warsaw. Moreover, American semiotician and philosopher Charles W. Morris helped many German and Austrian philosophers emigrate to the United States, including Rudolf Carnap, in 1936.
In the United Kingdom it was Alfred Jules Ayer who acquainted the British academia with the work of the Vienna Circle with his book Language, Truth, and Logic (1936). Karl Popper was also important for the reception and critique of their work, even though he never participated in the meetings of the Vienna Circle.