The Wiener Kreis in America

Abstract

The migration of a philosophical movement from Central Europe to America is the topic of this essay. Since I am not a trained historian, and since the data available to me are rather incomplete and uneven, I decided to write the story in a somewhat impressionistic manner. This, of course, involves in part an autobiographical perspective. Although I realize that I am a minor figure in the development of Logical Empiricism, I have known fairly intimately many of the major figures, and have been in more or less continual contact with most of them. I trust that my procedure of presentation — necessitated by unavoidable circumstances — will not be regarded as presumptuous. In extenuation I can only mention that I was (after Schlick’s brief visits) the first ‘propagandist’ of our outlook in the United States. I also happened to be, in 1930, the first of the group to enter the United States with an immigrant visa, and the first to acquire U. S. citizenship by naturalization, in 1937. Moreover, my friend Albert E. Blumberg and I were the ones who provided, in 1931, our philosophical movement with its international trade name, ‘Logical Positivism.’ For reasons to be sketched briefly later in this essay, most of us have preferred the label ‘Logical Empiricism’ or ‘Scientific Empiricism’ ever since about 1936.