Wienkretsen

Published in Sami Pihlström, Panu Raatikainen and Matti Sintonen (eds.) (2007) Approaching Truth. Essays in Honour of Ilkka Niiniluoto. College Publications, London.   Excerpts from the Introduction: "Rudolf Carnap had some problems with the title of his famous book, Der logische Aufbau der Welt (1928). He had written a first, unpublished, sketch planning such a project, entitled ’Vom Chaos zur Wirklichkeit’, already in the summer of 1922. That early construction began with lived experiences, with reality as a middle-level, proceeding then to psychology and ultimately to the formal structures of physics, purified completely from qualia." "Carnap’s Aufbau is often seen as a classic or even a paradigm of analytic philosophy. It has been less clear, however, what the aim of the book in fact was."