---
title: "Logical positivism"
chunk: 5/5
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:11:36.284431+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== Norwood Hanson ===
In 1958, Norwood Hanson's Patterns of Discovery characterised the concept of theory-ladenness. Hanson and Thomas Kuhn held that even direct observations are never truly neutral in that they are laden with theory, i.e. influenced by a system of theoretical presuppositions that function as an interpretative framework for the senses. Accordingly, individuals subscribed to different theories might report radically different observations even as they investigate the same phenomena. Hanson's thesis attacked the observation-theory distinction, which draws a dividing line between observational and non-observational (theoretical) language. More broadly, its findings challenged the central-most tenets of empiricism in questioning the infallibility and objectivity of empirical observation.

=== Thomas Kuhn ===
Thomas Kuhn's landmark book of 1962, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions—which discussed paradigm shifts in fundamental physics—critically undermined confidence in scientific foundationalism. Kuhn proposed in its place a coherentist model of science, whereby scientific progress revolves around cores of established, coherent ideas which periodically undergo abrupt revolutionary changes.
Though foundationalism was often considered a constituent doctrine of logical positivism (and Kuhn's thesis an epistemological criticism of the movement) such views were simplistic: In the 1930s, Neurath had argued for the adoption of coherentism, famously comparing the progress of science to reconstruction of a boat at sea. Carnap had entertained foundationalism from 1929 to 1930, but he, Hans Hahn and others would later join Neurath in converting to a coherentist philosophy. The conservative wing of the Vienna Circle under Moritz Schlick subscribed to a form of foundationalism, but its principles were defined unconventionally or ambiguously.
In some sense, Kuhn's book unified science, but through historical and social assessment rather than by networking the scientific specialties using epistemological or linguistic models. His ideas were adopted quickly by scholars in non-scientific disciplines, such as the social sciences in which neo-positivists were dominant, ushering academia into postpositivism or postempiricism.

=== Hilary Putnam ===
In his critique of the received view in 1962, Hilary Putnam attacked the observation-theory distinction. Putnam proposed that the division between "observation terms" and "theoretical terms" was untenable, determining that both categories have the potential to be theory-laden. Accordingly, he remarked that observational reports frequently refer to theoretical terms in practice. He illustrated cases in which observation terms can be applied to entities that Carnap would classify as unobservables. For example, in Newton's corpuscular theory of light, observation concepts can be applied to the consideration of both sub-microscopic and macroscopic objects.
Putnam advocated scientific realism, whereby scientific theory describes a real world existing independently of the senses. He rejected positivism, which he dismissed as a form of metaphysical idealism, in that it precluded any possibility to acquire knowledge of the unobservable aspects of nature. He also spurned instrumentalism, according to which a scientific theory is judged, not by whether it corresponds to reality, but by the extent to which it allows empirical predictions or resolves conceptual problems.

== Decline and legacy ==
In 1967, John Passmore wrote, "Logical positivism is dead, or as dead as a philosophical movement ever becomes". His opinions concurred with widespread sentiment in academic circles that the movement had run its course by the late 1960s. Logical positivism's fall heralded postpositivism, distinguished by Popper's critical rationalism—which characterised human knowledge as continuously evolving via conjectures and refutations—and Kuhn's historical and social perspectives on the saltatory course of scientific progress.
In a 1976 interview, A. J. Ayer, who had introduced logical positivism to the English-speaking world in the 1930s, was asked what he saw as its main defects and answered that, "nearly all of it was false". Yet, he maintained that it was "true in spirit", referring to the principles of empiricism and reductionism whereby mental phenomena resolve to the material or physical and philosophical questions largely resolve to ones of language and meaning. Despite its problems, logical positivism helped to anchor analytic philosophy in the English-speaking world and its influence extended beyond philosophy in shaping the course of psychology and the social sciences. In the post-war period, Carl Hempel's contributions were vitally important in establishing the subdiscipline of the philosophy of science.
Logical positivism's fall reopened the debate over the metaphysical merit of scientific theory, whether it can offer knowledge of the world beyond human experience (scientific realism) or whether it is simply an instrument to predict human experience (instrumentalism). Philosophers increasingly critiqued the movement's doctrine and history, often misrepresenting it without thorough examination, sometimes reducing it to oversimplifications and stereotypes, such as its association with foundationalism.

== See also ==

=== People ===
Ernst Mach – Austrian physicist, philosopher and university educator (1838–1916)
Gottlob Frege – German philosopher, logician, and mathematician (1848–1925)
Friedrich Waismann – Austrian mathematician, physicist and philosopher (1896–1959)
Gustav Bergmann – Austrian-born American philosopher (1906–1987)
Herbert Feigl – Austrian-American philosopher
Kurt Grelling – German logician and philosopher (1886–1942)
R. B. Braithwaite – English philosopher and ethicist (1900–1990)

== References ==

== Further reading ==

== External links ==
 Media related to Logical positivism at Wikimedia Commons
Articles by logical positivists

The Scientific Conception of the World: The Vienna Circle
Carnap, Rudolf. 'The Elimination of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language'
Carnap, Rudolf. 'Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology.'
Excerpt from Carnap, Rudolf. Philosophy and Logical Syntax.
Feigl, Herbert. 'Positivism in the Twentieth Century (Logical Empiricism)', Dictionary of the History of Ideas, 1974, Gale Group (Electronic Edition)
Articles on logical positivism

Kemerling, Garth. 'Logical Positivism', Philosophy Pages
Murzi, Mauro. 'The Philosophy of Logical Positivism.'