Scrape wikipedia-science: 1463 new, 1027 updated, 2549 total (kb-cron)

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+title: "Science journalism"
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+
+Science journalism conveys reporting about science to the public. The field typically involves interactions between scientists, journalists and the public. There are many different examples of science writing. A few examples include feature writing, risk communication, blogs, science books, scientific journals, science podcasts and science magazines.
+
+== Origins ==
+Modern science journalism originated in weather and other natural history observations, as well as  reports of new scientific findings, reported by almanacs and other news writing in the centuries following the advent of the printing press.
+One early example dates back to Digdarshan (means showing the direction), which was an educational monthly magazine that started publication in 1818 from Srirampore, Bengal, India. Digdarshan carried articles on different aspects of science, such as plants, steam boat, etc. It was available in Bengali, Hindi and English languages.
+In the U.S., Scientific American was founded in 1845, in another early example. One of the occasions an article was attributed to a 'scientific correspondent' was "A Gale in the Bay of Biscay" by William Crookes which appeared in The Times on 18 January 1871, page 7.
+Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) and John Tyndall (1820–1893) were scientists who were greatly involved in journalism and Peter Chalmers Mitchell (1864–1945) was Scientific Correspondent for The Times from 1918 to 1935.
+However it was with James Crowther's appointment as the 'scientific correspondent' of The Manchester Guardian by C. P. Scott in 1928 that science journalism really took shape. Crowther related that Scott had declared that there was "no such thing" as science journalism, at which point Crowther replied that he intended to invent it. Scott was convinced and then employed him.
+
+== Aims ==
+Science values detail, precision, the impersonal, the technical, the lasting, facts, numbers and being right. Journalism values brevity, approximation, the personal, the colloquial, the immediate, stories, words and being right now. There are going to be tensions.
+The aim of a science journalist is to render very detailed, specific, and often jargon-laden information produced by scientists into a form that non-scientists can understand and appreciate while still communicating the information accurately. One way science journalism can achieve that is to avoid an information deficit model of communication, which assumes a top-down, one-way direction of communicating information that limits an open dialogue between knowledge holders and the public. One such way of sparking an inclusive dialogue between science and society that leads to a broader uptake of post-high school science discoveries is science blogs. Science journalists face an increasing need to convey factually correct information through storytelling techniques in order to tap into both the rational and emotional side of their audiences, the latter of which to some extent ensuring that the information uptake persists.
+Science journalists often have training in the scientific disciplines that they cover. Some have earned a degree in a scientific field before becoming journalists or exhibited talent in writing about science subjects. However, good preparation for interviews and even deceptively simple questions such as "What does this mean to the people on the street?" can often help a science journalist develop material that is useful for the intended audience.
+
+== Science journalist responsibility ==
+
+Science journalists offer important contributions to the open science movement by using the Value Judgement Principle (VJP). Science journalists are responsible for "identifying and explaining major value judgments for members of the public." In other words, science journalists must make judgments such as what is good and bad (right and wrong). This is a very significant role because it helps "equip non-specialists to draw on scientific information and make decisions that accord with their own values". While scientific information is often portrayed in quantitative terms and can be interpreted by experts, the audience must ultimately decide how to feel about the information.
+Most science journalists begin their careers as either a scientist or a journalist and transition to science communication.
+One area in which science journalists seem to support varying sides of an issue is in risk communication. Science journalists may choose to highlight the amount of risk that studies have uncovered while others focus more on the benefits depending on audience and framing. Science journalism in contemporary risk societies leads to the institutionalisation of mediated scientific public spheres which exclusively discuss science and technology related issues. This also leads to the development of new professional relationship between scientists and journalists, which is mutually beneficial.

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+title: "Science journalism"
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+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_journalism"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
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+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+== Status ==
+With budget cuts at major newspapers and other media, there are fewer working science journalists employed by traditional print and broadcast media than before. Similarly, there are currently very few journalists in traditional media outlets that write multiple articles on emerging science, such as nanotechnology. In 2011, there were 459 journalists who had written a newspaper article covering nanotechnology, of whom 7 wrote about the topic more than 25 times. In January 2012, just a week after The Daily Climate reported that worldwide coverage of climate change continued a three-year slide in 2012 and that among the five largest US dailies, the New York Times published the most stories and had the biggest increase in coverage, that newspaper announced that it was dismantling its environmental desk and merging its journalists with other departments. News coverage on science by traditional media outlets, such as newspapers, magazines, radio and news broadcasts is being replaced by online sources. In April 2012, the New York Times was awarded two Pulitzer Prizes for content published by Politico and The Huffington Post (now HuffPost) both online sources, a sign of the platform shift by the media outlet. Science information continues to be widely available to the public online. The increase in access to scientific studies and findings causes science journalism to adapt. "In many countries the public's main source of information about science and technology is the mass media." Science journalists must compete for attention with other stories that are perceived as more entertaining. Science information cannot always be sensationalized to capture attention and the sheer amount of available information can cause important findings to be buried. The general public does not typically search for science information unless it is mentioned or discussed in mainstream media first. However, the mass media are the most important or only source of scientific information for people after completing their education. A common misconception about public interest surrounds science journalism. Those who choose which news stories are important typically assume the public is not as interested in news written by a scientist and would rather receive news stories that are written by general reporters instead. The results of a study conducted comparing public interest between news stories written by scientists and stories written by reporters concluded there is no significant difference. The public was equally interested in news stories written by a reporter and a scientist. This is a positive finding for science journalism because it shows it is increasingly relevant and is relied upon by the public to make informed decisions. "The vast majority of non-specialists obtain almost all their knowledge about science from journalists, who serve as the primary gatekeepers for scientific information." Ethical and accurate reporting by science journalists is vital to keeping the public informed. Science journalism is reported differently than traditional journalism. Conventionally, journalism is seen as more ethical if it is balanced reporting and includes information from both sides of an issue. Science journalism has moved to an authoritative type of reporting where they present information based on peer reviewed evidence and either ignore the conflicting side or point out their lack of evidence. Science journalism continues to adapt to a slow journalism method that is very time-consuming but contains higher quality information from peer-reviewed sources. They also practice sustainable journalism that focuses on solutions rather than only the problem. Presenting information from both sides of the issue can confuse readers on what the actual findings show. Balanced reporting can actually lead to unbalanced reporting because it gives attention to extreme minority views in the science community, implying that both sides have an equal number of supporters. It can give the false impression that an opposing minority viewpoint is valid. For example, a 2019 survey of scientists' views on climate change yielded a 100% consensus that global warming is human-caused. However, articles like "Climate Change: A Scientist and Skeptic Exchange Viewpoints," published by Divided We Fall in 2018, may unintentionally foster doubt in readers, as this particular scientist "did not say, as the media and the political class has said, that the science is settled."
+The public benefits from an authoritative reporting style in guiding them to make informed decisions about their lifestyle and health. Tracking the remaining experienced science journalists is becoming increasingly difficult. For example, in Australia, the number of science journalists has decreased to abysmal numbers: "you need less than one hand to count them." Due to the rapidly decreasing number of science journalists, experiments on ways to improve science journalism are also rare. However, in one of the few experiments conducted with science journalists, when the remaining population of science journalists networked online, they produced more accurate articles than when in isolation. New communication environments provide essentially unlimited information on a large number of issues, which can be obtained anywhere and with relatively limited effort. The web also offers opportunities for citizens to connect with others through social media and other 2.0-type tools to make sense of this information. "After a lot of hand wringing about the newspaper industry about six years ago, I take a more optimistic view these days," said Cristine Russell, president of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing. "The world is online. Science writers today have the opportunity to communicate not just with their audience but globally". Blog-based science reporting is filling in to some degree, but has problems of its own. One of the main findings is about the controversy surrounding climate change and how the media affects people's opinions on this topic. Survey and experimental research have discovered connections between exposure to cable and talk show radio channels and views on global warming. However, early subject analyses noticed that US media outlets exaggerate such scientific disputes around climate change that actually exist. A majority of Americans view global warming as an outlying issue that will essentially affect future generations of individuals in other countries. This is a problem considering that they are getting most of their information from these media sources that are opinionated and not nearly as concerned with supplying facts to their viewers. Research found that after people finish their education, the media becomes the most significant, and for many individuals, the sole source of information regarding science, scientific findings and scientific processes. Many people fail to realize that information about science included from online sources is not always credible. Since the 1980s, climate science and mass media have transformed into an increasingly politicized sphere. In the United States, Conservatives and Liberals understand global warming differently. Democrats often accept the evidence for global warming and think that it's caused by humans, while not many Republicans believe this. Democrats and liberals have higher and more steady trust in scientists, while conservative Republicans' trust in scientists has been declining. However, in the United Kingdom, mass media do not have nearly the impact on people's opinions as in the United States. They have a different attitude towards the environment which prompted them to approve the Kyoto Protocol, which works to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, while the U.S., the world's largest creator of carbon dioxide, has not done so.

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+---
+
+The content of news stories regarding climate change are affected by journalistic norms including balance, impartiality, neutrality and objectivity. Balanced reporting, which involves giving equal time to opposing sides of a debate over has had a harmful impact on the media coverage of climate science.

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+---
+
+== Criticism ==
+
+Science journalists regularly come under criticism for misleading reporting of scientific stories. All three groups of scientists, journalists and the public often criticize science journalism for bias and inaccuracies. However, with the increasing collaborations online between science journalists there may be potential with removing inaccuracies.
+The 2010 book Merchants of Doubt by historians of science Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway argues that in topics like the global warming controversy, tobacco smoking, acid rain, DDT and ozone depletion, contrarian scientists have sought to "keep the controversy alive" in the public arena by demanding that reporters give false balance to the minority side. Very often, such as with climate change, this leaves the public with the impression that disagreement within the scientific community is much greater than it actually is. Science is based on experimental evidence and testing, and disputation is a normal activity.
+Scholars have criticized science journalists for:
+
+Uncritical reporting
+Emphasizing frames of scientific progress and economic prospect
+Not presenting a range of expert opinion
+Having preferences toward positive messages
+Reporting unrealistic timelines and engaging in the production of a "cycle of hype"
+Science journalists can be seen as the gatekeepers of scientific information. Just like traditional journalists, science journalists are responsible for what truths reach the public.
+Scientific information is often costly to access. This is counterproductive to the goals of science journalism. Open science, a movement for "free availability and usability of scholarly publications," seeks to counteract the accessibility issues of valuable scientific information. Freely accessible scientific journals will decrease the public's reliance on potentially biased popular media for scientific information.
+Many science magazines, along with Newspapers like The New York Times and popular science shows like PBS Nova tailor their content to relatively highly educated audiences. Many universities and research institutions focus much of their media outreach efforts on coverage in such outlets. Some government departments require journalists to gain clearance to interview a scientist, and require that a press secretary listen in on phone conversations between government funded scientists and journalists.
+Many pharmaceutical marketing representatives have come under fire for offering free meals to doctors in order to promote new drugs. Critics of science journalists have argued that they should disclose whether industry groups have paid for a journalist to travel, or has received free meals or other gifts.
+Science journalism finds itself under a critical eye due to the fact that it combines the necessary tasks of a journalist along with the investigative process of a scientist.
+
+=== Chocolate hoax ===
+
+In 2015, John Bohannon produced a deliberately bad study to see how a low-quality open access publisher and the media would pick up their findings. He worked with a film-maker Peter Onneken who was making a film about junk science in the diet industry with fad diets becoming headline news despite terrible study design and almost no evidence.  He invented a fake "diet institute" that lacked even a website, used the pen name "Johannes Bohannon" and fabricated a press release.
+
+== Notable science journalists ==
+
+== See also ==
+
+== References ==
+
+== Further reading ==
+Dixon, Bernard, ed. (1989). From Creation to Chaos: Classic Writings in Science. Basil Blackwell. ISBN 978-0-631-14976-7.
+Brainard, Curtis (20 March 2009). "Nature's Artificial Divide". Columbia Journalism Review.
+Yong, Ed (29 July 2010). "On the Origin of Science Writers". National Geographic Phenomena Blog. Archived from the original on 11 March 2021.
+
+== External links ==

data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technoscience-0.md

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+title: "Technoscience"
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+---
+
+In common usage, technoscience refers to the entire long-standing and global human activity of technology, combined with the relatively recent scientific method that occurred primarily in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries. Technoscience is the study of how humans interact with technology using the scientific method. Technoscience thus comprises the history of human application of technology and modern scientific methods, ranging from the early development of basic technologies for hunting, agriculture, or husbandry (e.g. the well, the bow, the plow, the harness) and all the way through atomic applications, biotechnology, robotics, and computer sciences. This more common and comprehensive usage of the term technoscience can be found in general textbooks and lectures concerning the history of science.
+The relationship with the history of science is important in this subject and also underestimated, for example, by more modern sociologists of science. Instead, it is worth emphasizing the links that exist between books on the history of science and technology and the study of the relationship between science and technology within a framework of social developments. The generational leap between historical periods and scientific discoveries, the construction of machines, and the creation of tools in relation to the technological changes that occurs in very specific situations is important to consider.
+An alternate, more narrow usage occurs in some philosophical science and technology studies. In this usage, technoscience refers specifically to the technological and social context of science. Technoscience recognises that scientific knowledge is not only socially coded and historically situated but sustained and made durable by material (non-human) networks. Technoscience states that the fields of science and technology are linked and grow together, and scientific knowledge requires an infrastructure of technology in order to remain stationary or move forward.
+The latter, philosophic use of the term technoscience was popularized by French philosopher Gaston Bachelard in 1953. It was popularized in the French-speaking world by Belgian philosopher Gilbert Hottois in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and entered English academic usage in 1987 with Bruno Latour's book Science in Action.
+In translating the concept to English, Latour also combined several arguments about technoscience that had circulated separately within science and technology studies (STS) before into a comprehensive framework:
+
+the intertwinement of scientific and technological development as e.g. shown by the lab studies;
+the power of laboratories (and engineering workshops) to change the world as we know and experience it;
+the seamless webs that connect scientists, engineers and societal actors in actual practice (cf. John Law's concept of heterogeneous engineering);
+the propensity of technoscientific world to create new nature–culture hybrids, and hence to complicate the borders between nature and culture.
+
+== Conceptual levels of philosophical technoscience ==
+The concept of technoscience is considered in three levels: a descriptive-analytic level, a deconstructivist level, and a visionary level.
+
+=== Descriptive-analytic ===
+On a descriptive-analytic level, technoscientific studies examine the decisive role of science and technology in how knowledge is being developed. What is the role played by large research labs in which experiments on organisms are undertaken, when it comes to a certain way of looking at the things surrounding us? To what extent do such investigations, experiments and insights shape views of 'nature' and of human bodies? How do these insights link to the concept of living organisms as biofacts? To what extent do such insights inform technological innovation? Can the laboratory be understood as a metaphor for social structures in their entirety?
+
+=== Deconstructive ===
+On a deconstructive level, theoretical work is being undertaken on technoscience to address scientific practices critically, e.g. by Bruno Latour (sociology), by Donna Haraway (history of science), and by Karen Barad (theoretical physics). It is pointed out that scientific descriptions may be only allegedly objective; that descriptions are of a performative character, and that there are ways to de-mystify them. Likewise, new forms of representing those involved in research are being sought.
+
+=== Visionary ===
+On a visionary level, the concept of technoscience comprises a number of social, literary, artistic and material technologies from western cultures in the third millennium. This is undertaken in order to focus on the interplay of hitherto separated areas and to question traditional boundary-drawing: this concerns the boundaries drawn between scientific disciplines as well as those commonly upheld for instance between research, technology, the arts and politics. One aim is to broaden the term 'technology' (which by the Greek etymology of 'techné' connotes all of the following: arts, handicraft, and skill) so as to negotiate possibilities of participation in the production of knowledge and to reflect on strategic alliances. Technoscience can be juxtaposed with a number of other innovative interdisciplinary areas of scholarship which have surfaced in these recent years such as technoetic, technoethics and technocriticism.
+
+== Facets ==
+
+=== Social ===
+As with any subject, technoscience exists within a broader social context that must be considered. Science & Technology Studies researcher Sergio Sismondo argues, "Neither the technical vision nor the social vision will come into being without the other, though with enough Concerted Effort both may be brought into being together". Despite the frequent separation between innovators and the consumers, Sismondo argues that development of technologies, though stimulated by a technoscientific themes, is an inherently social process.
+Technoscience is so deeply embedded in people's everyday lives that its developments exist outside a space for critical thought and evaluation, argues Daniel Lee Kleinman (2005). Those who do attempt to question the perception of progress as being only a matter of more technology are often seen as champions of technological stagnation. The exception to this mentality is when a development is seen as threatening to human or environmental well-being. This holds true with the popular opposition of GMO crops, where the questioning of the validity of monopolized farming and patented genetics was simply not enough to rouse awareness.

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+title: "Technoscience"
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+category: "reference"
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+---
+
+=== Political ===
+Science and technology are tools that continually change social structures and behaviors. Technoscience can be viewed as a form of government or having the power of government because of its impact on society. The impact extends to public health, safety, the environment, and beyond. Innovations create fundamental changes and drastically change the way people live. For example, C-SPAN and social media give American voters a near real-time view of Congress. This has allowed journalists and the people to hold their elected officials accountable in new ways.
+
+=== Environmental ===
+Chlorine chemists and their scientific knowledge helped set the agenda for many environmental problems: PCBs in the Hudson River are polychlorinated biphenols; DDT, dieldrin, and aldrin are chlorinated pesticides; CFCs that deplete the ozone layer are chlorofluorocarbons. Industry actually manufactured the chemicals and consumers purchased them. Therefore, one can determine that chemists are not the sole cause for these issues, but they are not blameless.
+
+== See also ==
+Bernard Stiegler
+Feminist technoscience
+Technocriticism
+Technoethics
+
+== Notes ==
+
+== References ==
+Steven Lukes, Power (1974), A Radical View, London: Macmillan
+Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar (1979). Laboratory Life: the Social Construction of Scientific Facts. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-09418-7
+Gilbert Hottois (1984). Le signe et la technique. La philosophie à l'épreuve de la technique, Paris, Aubier Montaigne, Coll. "Res, L'invention philosophique", p. 59–60.
+Langdon Winner (1986), The Whale and the Reactor: The Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology, Chicago: University of Chicago Press
+Stanley Aronowitz, Barbara Martinsons and Michael Menser (1995), Technoscience and Cyberculture, Routledge
+Adam Schaff (1990). A sociedade informática: as conseqüências sociais da segunda revolução industrial. Editora Brasiliense. ISBN 85-11-14081-6
+Don Ihde (2003) Chasing Technoscience: Matrix for Materiality. Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-21606-0
+Sergio Sismondo (2004). An Introduction to Science and Technology Studies. Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 978-0-631-23444-9
+Daniel Lee Kleinman (2005), Science and Technology in Society: From Biotechnology to the Internet. Blackwell Pub
+Mike Michael (2006), Technoscience And Everyday Life: The Complex Simplicities of the Mundane, Open University Press
+Kristin Asdal, Brita Brenna, Ingunn Moser (2007), Technoscience: The Politics of Interventions, Akademika Publishing ISBN 978-8-274-773004
+"Hudson River PCBs — Background and Site Information". United States Environmental Protection Agency. Retrieved 2007-12-31.
+Hans Lenk (2007), Global TechnoScience and Responsibility, LIT Verlag
+Don Ihde (2009), Postphenomenology and Technoscience: The Peking University Lectures, State University of New York
+Adele E. Clarke and al. (2010), Biomedicalization: Technoscience, Health, and Illness in the U.S., Duke University Press
+Bruce Braun and Sarah J. Whatmore (2010), Political Matter: Technoscience, Democracy, and Public Life, University Of Minnesota Press ISBN 978-0-816-670895
+Marja Ylonen and Luigi Pellizzoni (2012), Neoliberalism and Technoscience: Critical Assessments, Ashgate Publishing Limited
+Edward Woodhouse (2013), The Future of Technological Civilization. Print; University Readers
+Guglielmo Rinzivillo (2020), Raccontare la tecnoscienza. Storia di macchine, strumenti, idee per fare funzionare il mondo, Roma, Edizioni Nuova Cultura (ISBN 978-88-3365-349-5; ISSN 2284-0567).
+
+== External links ==
+
+International Journal of Feminist Technoscience Archived 2007-06-26 at the Wayback Machine (open access journal with open peer review)

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+title: "Tree of knowledge system"
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+
+The tree of knowledge (ToK) system is a new map of Big History that traces cosmic evolution across four different planes of existence, identified as Matter, Life, Mind and Culture that are mapped respectively by the physical, biological, psychological and social domains of science. The Tree of Knowledge (ToK) System was developed by Gregg Henriques, who is a professor and core faculty member in the Combined-Integrated Doctoral Program in Clinical and School Psychology at James Madison University. The ToK System is part of a larger Unified Theory of Knowledge that Henriques describes as a consilient scientific humanistic philosophy for the 21st Century.
+The official Unified Theory of Knowledge website describes the ToK System as:
+
+[A] theory of scientific knowledge that defines the human knower in relation to the known. It achieves this novel accomplishment by solving the problem of psychology and giving rise to a truly consilient view of the scientific landscape. It accomplishes this via dividing the evolution of behavioral complexity into four different planes of existence...The ToK also characterizes modern empirical natural science as a kind of justification system that functions to map complexity and change. 
+The outline of the ToK System was first published in 2003 in Review of General Psychology. Two special issues of the Journal of Clinical Psychology in December 2004 and January 2005 were devoted to the elaboration and evaluation of the model. In 2008, a special issue of Theory & Psychology was devoted to the ToK System. In 2011, Henriques published A New Unified Theory of Psychology. That same year he also launched the blog Theory of Knowledge: A Unified Approach to Psychology and Philosophy on Psychology Today, which remains active. There is also a Theory Of Knowledge Society and discussion listserve that is devoted to discussing Henriques' work and other big picture viewpoints.   
+In some ways, the ToK System reflects a fairly common hierarchy of nature and of the sciences that has been represented in one way or another since the time of Auguste Comte, who in the 19th century used a hierarchical conception of nature to argue for the existence of sociology. It also has clear parallels with Aristotle's conception of the scales of nature and the first four levels of the Great Chain of Being.  
+Despite some overlap with a number of traditional schemes, the ToK System is properly thought of as a new theory of both ontic reality and our scientific knowledge of that reality. One of the most important and salient features of the Tree of Knowledge is how it represents reality as consisting of four different planes of existence. The theory is that, following Matter, Life, Mind and Culture each represent complex adaptive landscapes that are organized and mediated by novel emergent information processing and communication systems. Specifically, DNA/RNA store information that is processed by cells which then engage in intercellular communication to create the plane of existence called Life. Similarly, the brain and nervous system store and process information in animals which then engage in communication networks on the complex adaptive plane called Mind. Finally, linguistic storage and processing and communication between human beings generates the emergence of the Culture-Person plane of existence.   
+The separable planes of existence or dimension of complexity argument is one of the most crucial aspects of the system. Many have argued nature is hierarchically leveled; for example, a list of such levels might be subatomic particles, atoms, molecules, cells, organ structures, multi-celled organisms, consciousness, and society is common. The ToK System embraces a view of nature as levels, but adds the notion that there are also separable dimensions of complexity. The difference becomes particularly clear in the extension of the ToK System into the Periodic Table of Behavior. The Periodic Table of Behavior (PTB) shows that natural science can be arranged in terms of the four fundamental dimensions (i.e., matter, life, mind, and culture) and three fundamental levels of analysis (i.e., part, whole, group). The PTB also demonstrates that behavior is a central concept in science. Epistemologically, natural scientists view the world via a third person behavioral lens. Ontologically, science is about mapping different kinds of behaviors that take place in nature at various levels and dimensions of analysis. 
+The second central insight of the ToK System is that it shows how natural science is a particular kind of justification system that emerges out of Culture based on novel methods and specific epistemological commitments and assumptions (i.e., an exterior view point, quantification and experimentation). This epistemology and methodology functions to justify scientific ontology, which in turn maps the ontic reality. Specifically, the domains of the physical, biological, (basic) psychological and social sciences map the ontic dimensions of matter, life, mind and culture. The Periodic Table of Behavior further shows how science is a justification system that is arranged to map behavioral frequencies at different dimensions of complexity and levels of analysis.
+
+== Dimensions and planes of existence ==
+
+=== Matter/Object — Physical sciences ===
+The dimension of matter refers to the set of material objects and their behaviors through time. In accordance with modern cosmology, matter is theorized to have emerged from a pure energy singularity at the Big Bang. Space and time were also born at such a point. Nonliving material objects range in complexity from subatomic particles to large organic molecules. The physical sciences (i.e., physics, chemistry, geology, astronomy) describe the behavior of material objects.
+
+=== Life/Organism — Biological sciences ===
+The dimension of life refers to organisms and their behaviors through time. Living objects are considered a unique subset of material objects. Just as quantum particles form the fundamental units of material complexity, genes are the fundamental units of living information. Although many questions about the emergence of life remain unanswered, in accordance with modern biology, the ToK posits that natural selection operating on genetic combinations through time is the unified theory of biology and forms the foundational understanding for the emergence of organic complexity.

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+title: "Tree of knowledge system"
+chunk: 2/5
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_knowledge_system"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:37:35.269263+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+=== Mind/Animal — (Basic) psychological sciences ===
+Mind/cognition in the ToK system refers to the set of mental behaviors. Mental behaviors are behaviors of animals mediated by the nervous system that produce a functional effect on the animal-environment relationship. As such, Mind/cognition is essentially synonymous with what behavioral psychologists have meant when they use the term behavior. Thus, a fly avoiding a fly swatter, a rat pushing a bar or a human getting a drink of water are all mental behaviors. Mind is not synonymous with sentience or the capacity for mental experience, although such processes are presumed to emerge in the mental/cognitive dimension. Cognition, in the broad sense of the term is meaning bodily-neuro-social information processing, as in EEEE Cognition: Embodied, Embedded, Enactive, Extended. While cognitive science stands for naturalist study of mind, psychology is an approach grounded in the tradition of humanities, especially philosophy. Thus, by defining mind as mental behavior, Henriques argues that the ToK System provides a way to bridge the epistemological differences between cognitive and behavioral science. Henriques argues that comparative psychology, ethology, and (animal) cognitive behavioral neuroscience should all be thought of as parts of the discipline that maps the animal-mental domain. 
+
+=== Culture/Person — Human social sciences ===
+Culture in the ToK system refers to the set of sociolinguistic behaviors, which range from large scale nation states to individual human justifications for particular actions. Just as genetic information processing is associated with the Life dimension and neuronal information processing associated with the Mind dimension, symbolic information processing emerges with the Cultural dimension. Henriques argues that human cognitive science, human psychology and the social sciences (i.e., anthropology, sociology, political science, and economics) work to map this domain. 
+
+== Theoretical joint points ==
+
+=== The modern synthesis ===
+
+The modern synthesis refers to the merger of genetics with natural selection which occurred in the 1930s and 1940s and offers a reasonably complete framework for understanding the emergence of biological complexity. Although there remain significant gaps in biological knowledge surrounding questions such as the origin of life and the emergence of sexual reproduction, the modern synthesis represents the most complete and well-substantiated joint point.
+
+=== Behavioral investment theory ===
+Behavioral investment theory (BIT) is a metatheoretical formulation for the mind, brain and animal behavioral sciences. Henriques proposes that it enables the merger of the selection science of behaviorism with the information science of cognitive neuroscience that has conceptual parallels with the modern synthesis. BIT posits that the nervous system evolved as an increasingly flexible computational control system that coordinates the behavioral expenditure of energy of the animal as a whole. Expenditure of behavioral energy is theorized to be computed on an investment value system built evolutionarily through natural selection operating on genetic combinations and ontogenetically through behavioral selection operating on neural combinations. As such, the current behavioral investments of the animal are conceptualized as the joint product of the two vectors of phylogeny and ontogeny. A unique element of BIT is that it finds a core of agreement and builds bridges between five brain-behavior paradigms: (1) cognitive science; (2) behavioral science; (3) evolutionary theory and genetics; (4) neuroscience; and (5) cybernetics/systems theory.
+David C. Geary noted the similarities between his "motive-to-control" hypothesis and Henriques' Behavioral Investment Theory, which were developed independently of each other. Furthermore, Geary suggested that his model "seem[ed] to fill in many of the proximate mechanisms and evolutionary pressures that define the life-mind joint point, and provided a framework for further development of the mind-culture joint point."
+
+=== Justification systems theory ===
+The justification systems theory (JUST; formerly known as the justification hypothesis) posits that the evolution of language reached a tipping point with emergence of propositional claims. Specifically, propositional claims can be questioned, which generates the "question-answer" dynamic. This creates the problem of justification, which Henriques argues drives both the design of the human self-consciousness system as a mental organ of justification and gives rise to the evolution of the Culture-Person plane of existence. JUST is a novel proposal that allows for both the understanding of the evolution of culture and for identifying what makes humans distinct animals. A basic initial claim of JUST is that the process of justification is a crucial component of human mental behavior at both the individual and societal level. Unlike all other animals, humans everywhere ask for and give explanations for their actions. Arguments, debates, moral dictates, rationalizations, and excuses all involve the process of explaining why one's claims, thoughts or actions are warranted. In virtually every form of social exchange, from warfare to politics to family struggles to science, humans are constantly justifying their behavioral investments to themselves and others.
+JUST consists of three key postulates: 
+
+The first is that the evolution of propositional language must have created the problem of justification, which involves three interlocking problems of deciphering what is (1) analytically true and what is (2) good for the group and (3) good for the individual.
+The second postulate is that the structure and functional design of human consciousness can be understood as a solution to the problem of justification. Specifically, the three domains of human consciousness that Henriques identifies in the Updated Tripartite Model of the (1) experiential; (2) private narrator; and (3) public narrator are directly consistent with adaptive pressures that arise from the logic of the problem of justification. This analysis deepens when one considers the dynamic relationships and filtering that takes place between these three domains.
+The third postulate is that culture can be understood as large scale justification systems that coordinate the behavior of human populations. Cultural systems are seen to evolve much in the same way as organisms do in biological evolution: there is a process of variation, selection and retention of belief systems.

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+title: "Tree of knowledge system"
+chunk: 3/5
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_knowledge_system"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:37:35.269263+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+== The "problem of psychology" ==
+The ToK System emerged as a consequence of Henriques wrestling with what he calls "the problem of psychology". Henriques argues that the most difficult problem in psychology as a discipline is that while there is incredible diversity offered by different approaches to psychology, and there is no consensus model of what psychology actually is. Specifically, Henriques argues that the field lacks a clear definition, an agreed upon subject matter, and a coherent conceptual framework. The problem has been long standing, identified as the "crisis" by Lev Vygotsky in the mid 1920s. 
+Henriques further argues that the patent tendency of psychology has been toward theoretical and substantial fragmentation and increasing insularity among the "specialties." In other words, the discipline has fragmented into different schools of thought and methodology, with no overall framework to interpret and integrate the research of different areas. At its best, the different approaches are a strength of psychology; different approaches lead to novel ideas, and prevent psychologists from clinging to a paradigm that fails to explain a phenomenon. At its worst, adherents of one particular school cling to their beliefs concerning the relative importance of their research and disregard or are ignorant of different approaches. In most cases, individual psychologists have to determine for themselves which elements of which perspective to apply, and how to integrate them into their overall understanding.
+Henriques argues that the problem of psychology is a central feature of modern knowledge systems. In A New Unified Theory of Psychology, he described it as follows:
+
+The problem of psychology is the joint observation that the field cannot be coherently defined and yet it connects more deeply than any other discipline to the three great branches of learning. Taken together, these observations suggest that the problem of psychology is a profound problem in academia at large. This conclusion is bolstered by the fact that as psychology has lumbered along acquiring findings but not foundational clarity, the fragmentation of human knowledge has grown exponentially. All of this suggests that the question, "What is psychology?" is profoundly important, one of the central questions in all of philosophy. Asking the right questions is often the most important step in getting the right answer. My interest in psychotherapy integration ultimately led me to ask the question, "What is psychology?”. Although I had no idea at the time, it turns out that this is the right question. And, as startling as it sounds, because psychology connects to so many different domains, the correct answer to it opens up a whole new vision for integrating human knowledge.
+The reason for psychology's fragmentation, according to the ToK System, is that there has been no meta-theoretical frame that allows scholars to agree on the basic questions that need to be addressed. As such, the different schools of thought in psychology are like the blind men who each grab a part of the elephant and proclaim they have discovered its true nature. With its novel depiction of evolving dimensions of complexity, the ToK allows scholars finally to see the elephant. In his 2003 Review of General Psychology paper, Henriques used the ToK System with the attempt to clarify and align the views of B.F. Skinner and Sigmund Freud. These luminaries were chosen because when one considers their influence and historical opposition, it can readily be argued that they represent two schools of thought that are the most difficult to integrate. Henriques used the meta-perspective offered by the ToK to argue how one can retain the key insights from each school of thought, identify errors and points of confusion, and integrate the insights into a coherent whole.
+Cultural and personality psychologist, Michael Katzko, however critiques Henriques' position on "the problem of psychology":
+
+There is a very good reason for skepticism regarding the repeated claims that the one unique problem of psychology, applicable across the entire discipline, has been identified and that the ToK System solves it. The reason is given by the detail with which alternatives have been worked out, be they historical studies of institutional development or critical commentaries on the rhetorical structure of psychology's literature.
+
+=== Solution ===
+The problem of psychology, according to the ToK, is its conceptual incoherence, which Henriques identifies by the following: 
+
+(1) There is no agreed upon definition.
+(2) There is no agreed upon subject matter.
+(3) There is a proliferation of overlapping and redundant concepts.
+(4) There are a large number of paradigms with fundamentally different epistemological assumptions.
+(5) Specialization continues to be increasingly emphasized at the expense of generalization and thus the problem of fragmentation only grows.
+When the various conceptions of psychology (e.g., behavioral, humanistic, cognitive) are viewed through the lens of the ToK System, psychology spans two different dimensions of complexity: the mental and the cultural. In other words, the discipline has historically spanned two fundamentally separate problems: 
+
+(1) the problem of animal behavior in general, and
+(2) the problem of human behavior at the individual level.
+If, as previously thought, nature simply consisted of levels of complexity, psychology would not be crisply defined in relationship to biology or the social sciences. And, indeed, it is frequently suggested that psychology exists in an amorphous space between biology and the social sciences. However, with its dimension of complexity depiction, the ToK System suggests that psychology can be crisply defined as the science of mind, which is the third dimension of complexity. Furthermore, because human behavior exists in the fourth dimension, psychology must be divided into two broad scientific domains of 

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+title: "Tree of knowledge system"
+chunk: 4/5
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+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:37:35.269263+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+(1) psychological formalism and
+(2) human psychology.
+Psychological formalism is defined as the science of mind and corresponds to the behavior of animal objects. Human psychology is considered to be a unique subset of psychological formalism that deals with human behavior at the level of the individual. Because human behavior is immersed in the larger socio-cultural context (level four in the ToK System), human psychology is considered a hybrid discipline that merges the pure science of psychology with the social sciences. It is important to point out that there are other disciplines the ToK System would classify as “hybrids.” Molecular genetics, for example, is a hybrid between chemistry and biology and neuroscience is a hybrid between biology and psychology. As with Henriques' proposed conception of human psychology, both of these disciplines adopt an object level perspective (molecular and cellular, respectively) on phenomena that simultaneously exist as part of meta-level system processes (life and mind, respectively).
+Though David A. F. Haaga "congratulate[d] Dr. Henriques' ambitious, scholarly, provocative paper", and "found the Tree of Knowledge taxonomy, the theoretical joint points, the evolutionary history, and the levels of emergent properties highly illuminating", he asks the rhetorical questions, 
+
+If it is so difficult to define terms such as 'psychology' with such precision, why bother? Why not just agree that we all have at least a rough idea of what psychology is, and take the rest of the afternoon off? After all, if theoretical or empirical work improves our understanding of some aspect of the world or our fellow people, or improves our ability to help people enhance their physical or emotional well being, what difference does it make whether this work is considered a part of psychology, of cognitive science, of behavioral neuroscience, of public health, or what have you? This raises the question of what definitions in general are good for.
+In a similar vein, Scott O. Lilienfeld, who described Henriques' effort as "thoughtful", contended that psychology is "an inherently fuzzy concept that resists precise definition" and that "attempts to define psychology [would be] likely to hamper rather than foster consilience across disciplines". Lilienfield went on further to suggest that the scientist-practitioner gap in psychology lies not in definitional issues, but in different "epistemic attitudes" between these two groups. He stated that scientists have an epistemic attitude of empiricism, (where questions regarding human nature are settled by scientific evidence), and that practitioners have an epistemic attitude of romanticism, (where questions of human nature are settled by intuition). Lilienfeld suggested that the solution to the scientist-practitioner gulf isn't definitional, but in "train[ing] future clinical scientists to appreciate the proper places of romanticism and empiricism within science".
+
+== Consciousness and human behavior ==
+A frequent question and point of confusion in the ToK System is the definition and meaning of consciousness. As mentioned above, mind is not synonymous with consciousness. And, to understand consciousness from a ToK vantage point, it is crucial to recognize that the term is often ambiguous in its meaning. Two primary meanings are sentience, which is the capacity for mental experience and self-awareness, which is the capacity to be aware of one's awareness. Sentience is conceptualized as a "level 3" phenomenon, possessed by many animals other than humans and is defined as a "perceived" electro-neuro-chemical representation of animal-environment relations. The ingredient of neurological behavior that allows for the emergence of mental experience is considered the "hard" problem of consciousness and the ToK System does not address this question explicitly. In contrast, through the Justification Hypothesis (see below), the ToK System involves a very direct analysis of the other issue of consciousness, that of self-awareness. 
+Another frequent question that is raised is "Where does individual human behavior fall on the ToK?" To analyze human behavior from the context of the ToK, one uses the ToK like a prism to separate the dimensions of behavior into physiochemical, biogenetic, neuropsychological and sociolinguistic. Thus if we imagine a conversation between a husband and wife as follows:
+
+Wife: “You are late again.”
+Husband: “Please, not now. It was a stressful day, traffic was bad, and you know that if work needs to be done, I can’t just leave it.”
+
+The words represent the sociolinguistic dimension and are understood as a function of justification. Justification systems are seen both at the level of individual, micro-social and societal (i.e., the context of justification in which men work and women stay at home). The actions of the husband and wife in terms of facial expression, body movement, etc. are seen as the mental dimension and are understood as a function of behavioral investment. The physiological make up of the organ systems and cells of each body is seen as the biogenetic dimension. Finally, the position, temperature, molecular make up is seen as the physiochemical dimension. Each of the more basic dimensions represent conditions of possibility that allow for the emergence of the higher dimension of process. Thus, insufficient oxygen disrupts organic processes which in turn renders neuropsychological and sociolinguistic processes impossible.

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+title: "Tree of knowledge system"
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+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:37:35.269263+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+== Toward the integration of human knowledge ==
+As stated above, the ToK System proposes a new epistemology with the goal of moving academic knowledge toward what E.O. Wilson termed consilience. Consilience is the interlocking of fact and theory into a coherent, holistic view of knowledge. Henriques argues that the ToK affords new perspectives on how knowledge is obtained because it depicts how science emerges from culture and that the four dimensions of complexity correspond to four broad classes of science: the physical, biological, psychological and social sciences.
+Henriques further argues that developing such a system for integrating knowledge is not just an academic enterprise. He suggests that in an increasingly complex world, the fragmented state of knowledge can be seen as one of the most pressing social problems of our time. Henriques also believes that history seems to attest that the absence of a collective worldview ostensibly condemns humanity to an endless series of conflicts that inevitably stem from incompatible, partially correct, locally situated justification systems. Thus, from Henriques' perspective, there are good reasons for believing that if there was a shared, general background of explanation, humanity might be able to achieve much greater levels of harmonious relations.
+In a 2008 article on the ToK, Henriques cites Oliver Reiser's 1958 call for unifying scientific knowledge that Henriques implies is similar in theme to the ToK:
+
+In this time of divisive tendencies within and between the nations, races, religions, sciences and humanities, synthesis must become the great magnet which orients us all…[Yet] scientists have not done what is possible toward integrating bodies of knowledge created by science into a unified interpretation of man, his place in nature, and his potentialities for creating the good society. Instead, they are entombing us in dark and meaningless catacombs of learning.
+With its depiction of the dimensions of complexity and interlocking theoretical joint points, Henriques' believes that his  ToK System offers new avenues that might allow scholars to meet Reiser’s call for academic synthesis. Henriques, like Reiser, believes that with a shared sense of purpose and a common background of explanation, people might yet be able to integrate bodies of knowledge into a unified interpretation of humanity, with humanity's place in nature and its potentialities for creating the good society.
+
+== See also ==
+Tree of knowledge (philosophy) by René Descartes
+Tinbergen's four questions
+Behavioral repertoire
+Consilience
+Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge – 1998 book by E.O. Wilson
+Descriptive psychology
+General System Theory
+Psychological behaviorism
+Social meaning-making
+The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution – 1959 book by C. P. Snow
+Unified theory of cognition
+Unity of science
+Metasystem transition
+
+== References ==
+
+== Bibliography ==
+
+== External links ==
+The Official Tree of Knowledge Website Archived 6 December 2013 at the Wayback Machine
+Tree of Knowledge System/Expert article by Gregg Henriques at the Psychology Wiki
+This page uses content from the English-language version of Psychology Wiki. The original article was at Tree of Knowledge System/Expert article by Gregg Henriques. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. The text of both The Psychology Wiki and Wikipedia is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.

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+title: "Unified Science"
+chunk: 1/1
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Science"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:37:37.815419+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+"Unified Science" can refer to any of three related strands in contemporary thought.
+
+Belief in the unity of science was a central tenet of logical positivism. Different logical positivists construed this doctrine in several different ways, e.g. as a reductionist thesis, that the objects investigated by the special sciences reduce to the objects of a common, putatively more basic domain of science, usually thought to be physics; as the thesis that all of the theories and results of the various sciences can or ought to be expressed in a common language or "universal slang"; or as the thesis that all the special sciences share a common method.
+The writings of Edward Haskell and a few associates, seeking to rework science into a single discipline employing a common artificial language. This work culminated in the 1972 publication of Full Circle: The Moral Force of Unified Science.  The vast part of the work of Haskell and his contemporaries remains unpublished, however. Timothy Wilken and Anthony Judge have recently revived and extended the insights of Haskell and his coworkers.
+Unified Science has been a consistent thread since the 1940s in Howard T. Odum's systems ecology and the associated Emergy Synthesis, modeling the "ecosystem": the geochemical, biochemical, and thermodynamic processes of the lithosphere and biosphere. Modeling such earthly processes in this manner requires a science uniting geology, physics, biology, and chemistry (H.T.Odum 1995). With this in mind, Odum developed a  common language of science based on electronic schematics, with applications to ecology economic systems in mind (H.T.Odum 1994).
+
+
+== See also ==
+Consilience — the unification of knowledge, e.g. science and the humanities
+Tree of knowledge system
+
+
+== References ==
+Odum, H.T. 1994. Ecological and General Systems: An Introduction to Systems Ecology. Colorado University Press, Colorado.
+Odum, H.T. 1995. 'Energy Systems and the Unification of Science', in Hall, C.S. (ed.) Maximum Power: The Ideas and Applications of H.T. Odum. Colorado University Press, Colorado: 365-372.
+
+
+== External links ==
+Future Positive Timothy Wilken's website, including a lot of material and diagrams on Edward Haskell's Unified Science
+Cardioid Attractor Fundamental to Sustainability - 8 transactional games forming the heart of sustainable relationship Anthony Judge's further development of these ideas

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+title: "Unity of science"
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+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unity_of_science"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:37:39.001046+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+The unity of science is a thesis in philosophy of science that says that all the sciences form a unified whole. The variants of the thesis can be classified as ontological (giving a unified account of the structure of reality) and/or as epistemic/pragmatic (giving a unified account of how the activities and products of science work). There are also philosophers who emphasize the disunity of science, which does not necessarily imply that there could be no unity in some sense but does emphasize pluralism in the ontology and/or practice of science.
+Early versions of the unity of science thesis can be found in ancient Greek philosophers such as Aristotle, and in the later history of Western philosophy. For example, in the first half of the 20th century the thesis was associated with the unity of science movement led by Otto Neurath, and in the second half of the century the thesis was advocated by Ludwig von Bertalanffy in "General System Theory: A New Approach to Unity of Science" (1951) and by Paul Oppenheim and Hilary Putnam in "Unity of Science as a Working Hypothesis" (1958). It has been opposed by, for example, Jerry Fodor in "Special Sciences (Or: The Disunity of Science as a Working Hypothesis)" (1974), by Paul Feyerabend in Against Method (1975) and later works, by John Dupré in "The Disunity of Science" (1983) and The Disorder of Things: Metaphysical Foundations of the Disunity of Science (1993), by Nancy Cartwright in The Dappled World: A Study of the Boundaries of Science (1999) and other works, and by Evelyn Fox Keller in Making Sense of Life: Explaining Biological Development with Models, Metaphors, and Machines (2002) and other works.
+Jean Piaget suggested, in his 1918 book Recherche and later works, that the unity of science can be considered in terms of a circle of the sciences, where logic is the foundation for mathematics, which is the foundation for mechanics and physics, and physics is the foundation for chemistry, which is the foundation for biology, which is the foundation for sociology, the moral sciences, psychology, and the theory of knowledge, and the theory of knowledge forms a basis for logic, completing the circle, without implying that any science could be reduced to any other. More recently, many complex systems are considered to be transdisciplinary objects of study. Such systems can be modeled as having emergent properties at different levels of organization, which do not neatly correspond to separate disciplines such as physics or biology, and which cannot be adequately modeled using a philosophy of extreme reductionism ("everything comes from the bottom", which does not fully account for emergent properties) or extreme holism ("everything comes from the top", which does not fully account for systems' components and interactions).
+
+
+== See also ==
+
+
+== Notes ==
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== Further reading ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Unity of Science at PhilPapers
+Guide to the Unity of Science Movement Records 1934–1968 at the University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center

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+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+The Vienna Circle (German: Wiener Kreis) of logical empiricism was a group of philosophers and scientists drawn from the natural and social sciences, logic and mathematics who met regularly from 1924 to 1936 at the University of Vienna, chaired by Moritz Schlick. The Vienna Circle had an influence on 20th-century philosophy, especially philosophy of science and analytic philosophy.
+The philosophical position of the Vienna Circle was called logical empiricism (German: logischer Empirismus), logical positivism or neopositivism. It was influenced by Ernst Mach, David Hilbert, French conventionalism (Henri Poincaré and Pierre Duhem), Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Albert Einstein. The Vienna Circle was pluralistic and committed to the ideals of the Enlightenment. It was unified by the aim of making philosophy scientific with the help of modern logic. Main topics were foundational debates in the natural and social sciences, logic and mathematics; the modernization of empiricism by modern logic; the search for an empiricist criterion of meaning; the critique of metaphysics and the unification of the sciences in the unity of science.
+The Vienna Circle appeared in public with the publication of various book series – Schriften zur wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung (Monographs on the Scientific World-Conception), Einheitswissenschaft (Unified Science) and the journal Erkenntnis – and the organization of international conferences in Prague; Königsberg (today known as Kaliningrad); Paris; Copenhagen; Cambridge, UK, and Cambridge, Massachusetts. Its public profile was provided by the Ernst Mach Society (German: Verein Ernst Mach) through which members of the Vienna Circle sought to popularize their ideas in the context of programmes for popular education in Vienna.
+During the era of Austrofascism and after the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany most members of the Vienna Circle were forced to emigrate. The murder of Schlick in 1936 by former student Johann Nelböck put an end to the Vienna Circle in Austria.
+
+== History ==
+The history and development of the Vienna Circle shows various stages:
+
+=== First Vienna Circle (1907–1912) ===
+The pre-history of the Vienna Circle began with meetings on the philosophy of science and epistemology from 1908 on, promoted by Philipp Frank, Hans Hahn and Otto Neurath.
+Hans Hahn, the oldest of the three (1879–1934), was a mathematician. He received his degree in mathematics in 1902. Afterwards he studied under the direction of Ludwig Boltzmann in Vienna and David Hilbert, Felix Klein and Hermann Minkowski in Göttingen. In 1905 he received the Habilitation in mathematics. He taught at Innsbruck (1905–1906) and Vienna (from 1909).
+Otto Neurath (1882–1945) studied mathematics, political economy, and history in Vienna and Berlin. From 1907 to 1914 he taught in Vienna at the Neue Wiener Handelsakademie (Viennese Commercial Academy). Neurath married Olga, Hahn's sister, in 1911.
+Philipp Frank, the youngest of the group (1884–1966), studied physics at Göttingen and Vienna with Ludwig Boltzmann, David Hilbert and Felix Klein. From 1912, he held the chair of theoretical physics in the German University in Prague.
+Their meetings were held in Viennese coffeehouses from 1907 onward. Frank remembered:
+
+After 1910 there began in Vienna a movement which regarded Mach's positivist philosophy of science as having great importance for general intellectual life [...] An attempt was made by a group of young men to retain the most essential points of Mach's positivism, especially his stand against the misuse of metaphysics in science. [...] To this group belonged the mathematician H. Hahn, the political economist Otto Neurath, and the author of this book [i.e. Frank], at the time an instructor in theoretical physics in Vienna. [...] We tried to supplement Mach's ideas by those of the French philosophy of science of Henri Poincaré and Pierre Duhem, and also to connect them with the investigations in logic of such authors as Couturat, Schröder, Hilbert, etc.
+A number of further authors were discussed in the meetings such as Franz Brentano, Alexius Meinong, Hermann von Helmholtz, Heinrich Hertz, Edmund Husserl, Sigmund Freud, Bertrand Russell, Alfred North Whitehead, Vladimir Lenin and Gottlob Frege.
+Presumably the meetings stopped in 1912, when Frank went to Prague, to hold the chair of theoretical physics left vacant by Albert Einstein. Hahn left Vienna during World War I and returned in 1921.
+
+=== Formative years (1918–1924) ===
+The formation of the Vienna Circle began with Hahn returning to Vienna in 1921. Together with the mathematician Kurt Reidemeister he organized seminars on Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus logico-philosophicus and on Whitehead and Russell's Principia Mathematica.
+With the support of Hahn, Moritz Schlick was appointed to the chair of philosophy of the inductive sciences at the University of Vienna in 1922 – the chair formerly held by Ernst Mach and partly by Boltzmann. Schlick had already published two important works Raum und Zeit in die gegenwärtigen Physik (Space and Time in contemporary Physics) in 1917 and Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre (General Theory of Knowledge) in 1918.
+Immediately after Schlick's arrival in Vienna, he organized discussions with the mathematicians around Hahn. In 1924 Schlick's students Friedrich Waismann and Herbert Feigl suggested to their teacher a sort of regular "evening circle". From winter term 1924 on regular meetings were held at the Institute of Mathematics in Vienna's Boltzmanngasse 5 on personal invitation by Schlick. These discussions can be seen as the beginning of the Vienna Circle.
+
+=== Non-public phase – Schlick Circle (1924–1928) ===
+The group that met from 1924 on was quite diverse and included not only recognized scientists such as Schlick, Hahn, Kraft, Philipp Frank, Neurath, Olga Hahn-Neurath, and Heinrich Gomperz, but also younger students and doctoral candidates. In addition, the group invited foreign visitors.
+In 1926 Schlick and Hahn arranged to bring Rudolf Carnap to the University of Vienna as a Privatdozent (private lecturer). Carnap's Logical Structure of the World was intensely discussed in the Circle.
+Also Wittgenstein's Tractatus logico-philosophicus was read out loud and discussed. From 1927 on personal meetings were arranged between Wittgenstein and Schlick, Waismann, Carnap and Feigl.

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+---
+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.

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+title: "Vienna Circle"
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+category: "reference"
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+date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:37:41.365102+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+== Congresses and publications ==
+
+The Vienna Circle was very active in advertising their new philosophical ideas. Several congresses on epistemology and philosophy of science were organized, with the help of the Berlin Circle. There were some preparatory congresses: Prague (1929), Königsberg (1930), Prague (1934) and then the first congress on scientific philosophy held in Paris (1935), followed by congresses in Copenhagen (1936), Paris (1937), Cambridge, UK (1938), Cambridge, Massachusetts. (1939). The Königsberg congress (1930) was very important, for Kurt Gödel announced that he had proven the completeness of first-order logic and the incompleteness of formal arithmetic. Another very interesting congress was the one held in Copenhagen (1936), which was dedicated to quantum physics and causality.
+Between 1928 and 1937, the Vienna Circle published ten books in a collection named Schriften zur wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung (Monographs on the Scientific World-Conception), edited by Schlick and Frank. Karl Raimund Popper's book Logik der Forschung was published in this collection. Seven works were published in another collection, called Einheitswissenschaft (Unified Science). In 1930 Rudolf Carnap and Hans Reichenbach undertook the editorship of the journal Erkenntnis, which was published between 1930 and 1940 (from 1939 the editors were Otto Neurath, Rudolf Carnap and Charles Morris).
+The following is the list of works published in the two collections edited by the Vienna Circle.
+Schriften zur wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung (Monographs on the Scientific World-Conception), edited by Schlick and Frank:
+
+Richard von Mises, Wahrscheinlichkeit, Statistik und Wahrheit, 1928 (Probability, Statistics, and Truth, New York: Macmillan company, 1939)
+Rudolf Carnap, Abriss der Logistik, 1929
+Moritz Schlick, Fragen der Ethik, 1930 (Problems of Ethics, New York: Prentice-Hall, 1939)
+Otto Neurath, Empirische Soziologie, 1931
+Philipp Frank, Das Kausalgesetz und seine Grenzen, 1932 (The Law of Causality and its Limits, Dordrecth; Boston: Kluwer, 1997)
+Otto Kant, Zur Biologie der Ethik, 1932
+Rudolf Carnap, Logische Syntax der Sprache, 1934 (The Logical Syntax of Language, New York: Humanities, 1937)
+Karl Raimund Popper, Logik der Forschung, 1934 (The Logic of Scientific Discovery, New York: Basic Books, 1959)
+Josef Schächter, Prolegomena zu einer kritischen Grammatik, 1935 (Prolegomena to a Critical Grammar, Dordrecht; Boston: D. Reidel Pub. Co., 1973)
+Victor Kraft, Die Grundlagen einer wissenschaftliche Wertlehre, 1937 (Foundations for a Scientific Analysis of Value, Dordrecht; Boston: D. Reidel Pub. Co., 1981)
+Einheitswissenschaft (Unified Science), edited by Carnap, Frank, Hahn, Neurath, Jørgensen (after Hahn's death), Morris (from 1938):
+
+Hans Hahn, Logik, Mathematik und Naturerkennen, 1933
+Otto Neurath, Einheitswissenschaft und Psychologie, 1933
+Rudolf Carnap, Die Aufgabe der Wissenschaftlogik, 1934
+Philipp Frank, Das Ende der mechanistischen Physik, 1935
+Otto Neurath, Was bedeutet rationale Wirtschaftsbetrachtung, 1935
+Otto Neurath, E. Brunswik, C. Hull, G. Mannoury, J. Woodger, Zur Enzyklopädie der Einheitswissenschaft. Vorträge, 1938
+Richard von Mises, Ernst Mach und die empiristische Wissenschaftauffassung, 1939
+These works are translated in Unified Science: The Vienna Circle Monograph Series Originally Edited by Otto Neurath, Kluwer, 1987.
+Monographs, arranged in chronological order, published in the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science:
+
+Otto Neurath, Niels Bohr, John Dewey, Bertrand Russell, Rudolf Carnap, Charles Morris, Encyclopedia and unified science, 1938, vol.1 n.1
+Charles Morris, Foundations of the theory of signs, 1938, vol.1 n.2
+Victor Lenzen, Procedures of empirical sciences, 1938, vol.1 n.5
+Rudolf Carnap, Foundations of logic and mathematics, 1939, vol.1 n.3
+Leonard Bloomfield, Linguistic aspects of science, 1939, vol.1 n.4
+Ernest Nagel, Principles of the theory of probability, 1939, vol.1 n.6
+John Dewey, Theory of valuation, 1939, vol.2 n.4
+Giorgio de Santillana and Edgar Zilsel, The development of rationalism and empiricism, 1941, vol.2 n.8
+Otto Neurath, Foundations of social sciences, 1944, vol.2 n.1
+Joseph H. Woodger, The technique of theory construction, 1949, vol.2 n.5
+Philipp Frank, Foundations of physics, 1946, vol.1 n.7
+Erwin Finlay-Freundlich, Cosmology, 1951, vol.1 n.8
+Jørgen Jørgensen, The development of logical empiricism, 1951, vol.2 n.9
+Egon Brunswik, The conceptual framework of psychology, 1952, vol.1 n.10
+Carl Hempel, Fundamentals of concept formation in empirical science, 1952, vol.2 n.7
+Felix Mainx, Foundations of biology, 1955, vol.1 n.9
+Abraham Edel, Science and the structure of ethics, 1961, vol.2 n.3
+Thomas S. Kuhn, The structure of scientific revolutions, 1962, vol.2 n.2
+Gerhard Tintner, Methodology of mathematical economics and econometrics, 1968, vol.2 n.6
+Herbert Feigl and Charles Morris, Bibliography and index, 1969, vol.2 n.10
+
+== Topics and debates ==
+The Vienna Circle cannot be assigned one single philosophy. First, there existed a plurality of philosophical positions within the Circle, and second, members often changed their views fundamentally in the course of time and in reaction to discussions in the Circle. It thus seems more convenient to speak of "the philosophies (in the plural) of the Vienna Circle".
+However, some central topics and debates can be identified.

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+title: "Vienna Circle"
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+---
+
+=== The Manifesto (1929) ===
+This states the scientific world-conception of the Vienna Circle, which is characterized "essentially by two features. First it is empiricist and positivist: there is knowledge only from experience. Second, the scientific world-conception is marked by the application of a certain method, namely logical analysis."
+Logical analysis is the method of clarification of philosophical problems; it makes an extensive use of symbolic logic and distinguishes the Vienna Circle empiricism from earlier versions. The task of philosophy lies in the clarification—through the method of logical analysis—of problems and assertions.
+Logical analysis shows that there are two different kinds of statements; one kind includes statements reducible to simpler statements about the empirically given; the other kind includes statements which cannot be reduced to statements about experience and thus they are devoid of meaning. Metaphysical statements belong to this second kind and therefore they are meaningless. Hence many philosophical problems are rejected as pseudo-problems which arise from logical mistakes, while others are re-interpreted as empirical statements and thus become the subject of scientific inquiries.
+One source of the logical mistakes that are at the origins of metaphysics is the ambiguity of natural language. "Ordinary language for instance uses the same part of speech, the substantive, for things ('apple') as well as for qualities ('hardness'), relations ('friendship'), and processes ('sleep'); therefore it misleads one into a thing-like conception of functional concepts". Another source of mistakes is "the notion that thinking can either lead to knowledge out of its own resources without using any empirical material, or at least arrive at new contents by an inference from given states of affair". Synthetic knowledge a priori is rejected by the Vienna Circle. Mathematics, which at first sight seems an example of necessarily valid synthetic knowledge derived from pure reason alone, has instead a tautological character, that is its statements are analytical statements, thus very different from Kantian synthetic statements. The only two kinds of statements accepted by the Vienna Circle are synthetic statements a posteriori (i.e., scientific statements) and analytic statements a priori (i.e., logical and mathematical statements).
+However, the persistence of metaphysics is connected not only with logical mistakes but also with "social and economical struggles". Metaphysics and theology are allied to traditional social forms, while the group of people who "faces modern times, rejects these views and takes its stand on the ground of empirical sciences". Thus the struggle between metaphysics and scientific world-conception is not only a struggle between different kinds of philosophies, but it is also—and perhaps primarily—a struggle between different political, social, and economical attitudes. Of course, as the manifesto itself acknowledged, "not every adherent of the scientific world-conception will be a fighter". Many historians of the Vienna Circle see in the latter sentence an implicit reference to a contrast between the so-called 'left wing' of the Vienna Circle, mainly represented by Neurath and Carnap, and Moritz Schlick. The aim of the left wing was to facilitate the penetration of the scientific world-conception in "the forms of personal and public life, in education, upbringing, architecture, and the shaping of economic and social life". In contrast, Schlick was primarily interested in the theoretical study of science and philosophy. Perhaps the sentence "Some, glad of solitude, will lead a withdrawn existence on the icy slopes of logic" is an ironic reference to Schlick.
+The manifesto lists Walter Dubislav, Josef Frank, Kurt Grelling, Hasso Härlen, Eino Kaila, Heinrich Loewy, F. P. Ramsey, Hans Reichenbach, Kurt Reidemeister, and Edgar Zilsel as people "sympathetic to the Vienna Circle" and Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, and Ludwig Wittgenstein as "leading representatives  of the scientific world-conception".
+
+=== Unified science ===
+
+The final goal pursued by the Vienna Circle was unified science, that is the construction of a "constitutive system" in which every legitimate statement is reduced to the concepts of lower level which refer directly to the given experience. "The endeavour is to link and harmonise the achievements of individual investigators in their various fields of science". From this aim follows the search for clarity, neatness, and for a symbolic language that eliminates the problems arising from the ambiguity of natural language. The Vienna Circle published a collection, called Einheitswissenschaft (Unified Science), edited by Rudolf Carnap, Philipp Frank, Hans Hahn, Otto Neurath, Jørgen Jørgensen (after Hahn's death) and Charles W. Morris (from 1938), whose aim was to present a unified vision of science. After the publication in Europe of seven monographs from 1933 to 1939, the collection was dismissed, because of the problems arising from the World War II. In 1938 a new series of publications started in the United States. It was the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, an ambitious project never completed devoted to unified science. Only the first section Foundations of the Unity of Sciences was published; it contains two volumes for a total of twenty monographs published from 1938 to 1969. As remembered by Rudolf Carnap and Charles Morris in the Preface to the 1969 edition of the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science:
+
+The Encyclopedia was in origin the idea of Otto Neurath. It was meant as a manifestation of the unity of science movement [...] Original plans for the Encyclopedia were ambitious. In addition to the two introductory volumes, there was to be a section on the methodology of the sciences, one on the existing state of the unification of sciences, and possibly a section on the application of the sciences. It was planned that the work in its entirety would comprise about twenty-six volumes (260 monographs)
+Thomas Kuhn's well known work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, was published in this Encyclopedia in 1962, as the number two in the second volume.

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+title: "Vienna Circle"
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+date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:37:41.365102+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+=== Critique of metaphysics ===
+The attitude of Vienna Circle towards metaphysics is well expressed by Carnap in the article 'Überwindung der Metaphysik durch Logische Analyse der Sprache' in Erkenntnis, vol. 2, 1932 (English translation 'The Elimination of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language' in Sarkar, Sahotra, ed., Logical empiricism at its peak: Schlick, Carnap, and Neurath, New York : Garland Pub., 1996, pp. 10–31). A language—says Carnap—consists of a vocabulary, i.e., a set of meaningful words, and a syntax, i.e., a set of rules governing the formation of sentences from the words of the vocabulary. Pseudo-statements, i.e., sequences of words that at first sight resemble statements but in reality have no meaning, are formed in two ways: either meaningless words occur in them, or they are formed in an invalid syntactical way. According to Carnap, pseudo-statements of both kinds occur in metaphysics.
+A word W has a meaning if two conditions are satisfied. First, the mode of the occurrence of W in its elementary sentence form (i.e., the simplest sentence form in which W is capable of occurring) must be fixed. Secondly, if W occurs in an elementary sentence S, it is necessary to give an answer to the following questions (that are—according to Carnap—equivalent formulation of the same question):

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+title: "Vienna Circle"
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+
+What sentences is S deducible from, and what sentences are deducible from S?
+Under what conditions is S supposed to be true, and under what conditions false?
+How is S verified?
+What is the meaning of S?
+(Carnap, "The Elimination of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language" in Sarkar, Sahotra 1996, p. 12)
+An example offered by Carnap concerns the word 'arthropod'. The sentence form "the thing x is an arthropod" is an elementary sentence form that is derivable from "x is an animal", "x has a segmented body" and "x has jointed legs". Conversely, these sentences are derivable from "the thing x is an arthropod". Thus the meaning of the word 'arthropod' is determined.
+According to Carnap, many words of metaphysics do not fulfill these requirements and thus they are meaningless. As an example, Carnap considers the word 'principle'. This word has a definite meaning, if the sentence "x is the principle of y" is supposed to be equivalent to the sentence "y exists by virtue of x" or "y arises out of x". The latter sentence is perfectly clear: y arises out of x when x is invariably followed by y, and the invariable association between x and y is empirically verifiable. But—says Carnap—metaphysicians are not satisfied with this interpretation of the meaning of 'principle'. They assert that no empirical relation between x and y can completely explain the meaning of "x is the principle of y", because there is something that cannot be grasped by means of the experience, something for which no empirical criterion can be specified. It is the lacking of any empirical criterion—says Carnap—that deprives of meaning the word 'principle' when it occurs in metaphysics. Therefore, metaphysical pseudo-statements such as "water is the principle of the world" or "the spirit is the principle of the world" are void of meaning because a meaningless word occurs in them.
+However, there are pseudo-statements in which occur only meaningful words; these pseudo-statements are formed in a counter-syntactical way. An example is the word sequence "Caesar is a prime number"; every word has a definite meaning, but the sequence has no meaning. The problem is that "prime number" is a predicate of numbers, not a predicate of human beings. In the example the nonsense is evident; however, in natural language the rules of grammar do not prohibit the formation of analogous meaningless word sequences that are not so easily detectable. In the grammar of natural languages, every sequence of the kind "x is y", where x is a noun and y is a predicate, is acceptable. In fact, in the grammar there is no distinction between predicate which can be affirmed of human beings and predicate which can be affirmed of numbers. So "Caesar is a general" and "Caesar is a prime number" are both well-formed, in contrast for example with "Caesar is and", which is ill-formed. In a logically constructed language—says Carnap—a distinction between the various kinds of predicate is specified, and pseudo-statements as "Caesar is a prime number" are ill-formed. Now, and this is the main point of Carnap's argument, metaphysical statements in which meaningless words do not occur, are indeed meaningless because they are formed in a way which is admissible in natural languages, but not in logically constructed languages. Carnap attempts to indicate the most frequent sources of errors from which metaphysical pseudo-statements can arise. One source of mistakes is the ambiguity of the verb "to be", which is sometimes used as a copula ("I am hungry"), and sometimes to designate existence ("I am"). The latter statement incorrectly suggests a predicative form, and thus it suggests that existence is a predicate. Only modern logic, with the introduction of an explicit sign to designate existence (the sign 
+  
+    
+      
+        ∃
+        
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle \exists \;}
+  
+), which occurs only in statements such as 
+  
+    
+      
+        ∃
+        
+        x
+        P
+        (
+        x
+        )
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle \exists \;xP(x)}
+  
+, never as a predicate, has shown that existence is not a predicate, and thus has revealed the logical error from which pseudo-statements such as "cogito, ergo sum" has arisen.
+Another source of mistakes is type confusions, in which a predicate of a kind is used as a predicate of another kind. For example, the pseudo-statements "we know the Nothing" is analogous to "we know the rain", but while the latter is well-formed, the former is ill-formed, at least in a logically constructed language, because "Nothing" is incorrectly used as a noun. In a formal language, "Nothing" only means 
+  
+    
+      
+        ¬
+        
+        ∃
+        
+        x
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle \lnot \;\exists \;x}
+  
+, such as "there is nothing which is outside"—i.e., 
+  
+    
+      
+        ¬
+        
+        ∃
+        
+        x
+        O
+        (
+        x
+        )
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle \lnot \;\exists \;xO(x)}
+  
+, and thus "Nothing" never occurs as a noun or as a predicate, but as a quantifier.
+According to Carnap, although metaphysics has no theoretical content, it does have content: metaphysical pseudo-statements express the attitude of a person towards life, and this is the role of metaphysics. He compares it to an art like lyrical poetry; the metaphysician works with the medium of the theoretical; he confuses art with science, attitude towards life with knowledge, and thus produces an unsatisfactory and inadequate work. "Metaphysicians are musicians without musical ability".
+
+== Institute Vienna Circle / Vienna Circle Society ==
+In 1991 the Institute Vienna Circle (IVC) was established as a society in Vienna. It is dedicated to studying the work and influence of the Vienna Circle. In 2011 it was integrated in the University of Vienna as a subunit of the Faculty of Philosophy and Education. Since 2016 the former society continues its activities in close cooperation with the IVC under the changed name Vienna Circle Society (VCS). In 2015 the institute co-organized an exhibition on the Vienna Circle in the main building of the University of Vienna.
+
+== See also ==
+Formalism (mathematics)
+Logical behaviorism
+Logicism
+List of Austrian intellectual traditions
+Mastermind group
+
+== Notes ==
+
+== Bibliography ==
+
+=== Primary literature ===
+
+=== Secondary literature ===
+
+== External links ==
+
+Institute Vienna Circle
+Vienna Circle Society
+Vienna Circle Foundation Amsterdam Archived 5 December 2020 at the Wayback Machine
+Thomas Uebel, "Vienna Circle", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy