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Coming to America: Carnap, Reichenbach and the Great Intellectual Migration. Part I: Rudolf Carnap

Verhaegh, Sander (2020) Coming to America: Carnap, Reichenbach and the Great Intellectual Migration. Part I: Rudolf Carnap. [Preprint]

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Abstract

In the years before the Second World War, Rudolf Carnap and Hans Reichenbach emigrated to the United States, escaping the quickly deteriorating political situation on the continent. Once in the U.S., the two significantly changed the American philosophical climate. In this two-part paper, I reconstruct Carnap’s and Reichenbach’s surprisingly numerous interactions with American academics in the decades before their move in order to explain the impact of their arrival in the late 1930s. Building on archival material of several key players and institutions in the development of scientific philosophy, I take some first steps toward answering the question why logical empiricism became so successful in the United States after the War. Part I reconstructs Carnap’s development between 1923, when he first visited New York, and 1936, when he was offered a position at the University of Chicago. Part II traces Reichenbach’s development and focuses on his frequent interactions with American academics throughout the 1930s. In both parts, special attention is paid to the zealous efforts of a number of American academics (most notably Edward Allen, Sidney Hook, C. I. Lewis, Charles Morris, Ernest Nagel, and W. V. Quine) to market the work of Carnap and Reichenbach in the United States.


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Item Type: Preprint
Creators:
CreatorsEmailORCID
Verhaegh, Sandera.a.verhaegh@uvt.nl
Additional Information: This part I of a two-part paper. Part II can be found at http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/18196
Keywords: Rudolf Carnap; Hans Reichenbach; Logical Empiricism; Great Intellectual Migration; Logical Positivism; Pragmatism; C. I. Lewis; W. V. Quine; Charles Morris; Sidney Hook; Ernest Nagel; Herbert Feigl
Subjects: General Issues > History of Philosophy of Science
General Issues > Logical Positivism/Logical Empiricism
General Issues > Philosophers of Science
Depositing User: Dr Sander Verhaegh
Date Deposited: 08 Oct 2020 12:27
Last Modified: 08 Oct 2020 12:27
Item ID: 18195
Subjects: General Issues > History of Philosophy of Science
General Issues > Logical Positivism/Logical Empiricism
General Issues > Philosophers of Science
Date: 1 October 2020
URI: https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/18195

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