Engineers and Drifters: The Ideal of Explication and Its Critics

Abstract

On the surface, Carnap’s writings give the appearance of enormous heterogeneity, and are often read through the distorting lens of a popular mythology about the Vienna Circle and logical positivism. In my book (Carus 2007a) I tried, following the hints given by certain students of the late Carnap such as Richard Jeffrey and Howard Stein, to set the myths aside and find a thread of coherence. I told a story that made the ideal of explication — a species of Enlightenment engineering ideal1 — central, and the specific language projects more peripheral.