Neopositivism is a philosophical school that includes the ideas of empiricism. This teaching is to learn the world using sensory experience. And relying on logic, rationality and mathematics to be able to systematize the knowledge gained. Logical positivism, as this direction is also called, claims that if everything that is impossible to know is eliminated, the world will be known. Neopositivism, whose representatives mainly lived in Warsaw and Lviv, Berlin, and even in the United States of America, proudly carried this title. After the outbreak of World War I, many of them emigrated to the west of Europe and across the Atlantic Ocean, which contributed to the spread of this doctrine.
History of development
For the first time, Ernst Mach and Ludwig Wittgenstein started talking about a new direction . According to their words, neopositivism is a synthesis of metaphysics, logic and science. One of them even wrote a treatise on logic, where he emphasized the central provisions of the emerging school:
- Our thinking is limited only by language, therefore, the more people know languages and the wider their education, the further their thinking extends.
- There is only one world, facts, events and scientific progress determine how we imagine it.
- Each proposal reflects the whole world, as it is built according to similar laws.
- Any complex sentence can be divided into several simple ones, consisting essentially of facts.
- Higher forms of being are inexpressible. Simply put, the spiritual sphere cannot be measured and deduced in the form of a scientific formula.
Machism
This term is often used as a synonym for the definition of "positivism." Its creators are considered E. Mach and R. Avenarius.
Mach was an Austrian physicist and philosopher, studied mechanics, gas dynamics, acoustics, optics and otorhinolaryngology. The main idea of Machism is that experience should form an idea of the world. Positivism and neopositivism as teachings that advocate an empirical path of knowledge are rejected by Machism, the main assertion of which - philosophy is obliged to become a science that studies the senses of man. And this is the only way to gain knowledge about the real world.
Saving thinking
Neopositivism in philosophy is a new vision of the old problem. “Saving thinking” would allow to cover a maximum of issues with a minimum of effort. The founders of neopositivism considered this pragmatic approach to be the most acceptable, logical and organized for research. In addition, these philosophers believed that in order to expedite scientific fabrications and formulations, descriptions and explanations should be removed from them.
Mach believed that the simpler the science, the closer it is to ideal. If the definition is formulated as simple and clear as possible, it reflects the true picture of the world. Machism became the basis of neopositivism; it was identified with the "biological-economic" theory of knowledge. Physics has lost its metaphysical component, while philosophy has become only a way of analyzing language. So affirmed neopositivism. His representatives sought a simple and economical understanding of the world, which they partially succeeded.
Vienna Circle
At the Department of Inductive Sciences of the University of Vienna, a circle of people has formed who want to engage in science and philosophy at the same time. The ideological core of this organization was Moritz Schlick.
David Hume can be called another man who promoted neopositivism. Problems that he considered incomprehensible science, such as God, the soul, and similar metaphysical aspects, were not the object of his research. All members of the Vienna Circle were firmly convinced that things that were not empirically proven were inconsequential and did not require detailed study.
Epistemological principles
The "Vienna School" has formulated its principles of knowledge of the world. Here is some of them.
- All knowledge of mankind is based on sensory perception. Certain facts may not be related. What a person cannot understand empirically does not exist. So another principle was born: any scientific knowledge can be reduced to a simple sentence based on sensory perception.
- The knowledge that we gain through sensory perception is absolute true. They also introduced the concepts of true and protocol sentences, which changed the attitude to scientific formulations in general.
- Absolutely all the functions of knowledge are reduced to a description of the sensations received. To the neo-positivists, the world seemed to be a combination of impressions formulated in simple sentences. Positivism and neopositivism refused to give definitions to the outside world, reality and other metaphysical things, considering them insignificant. Their main task was to compile criteria for assessing individual sensations and systematize them.
Abstracts
The denial of higher ideas and problems, the specific form of knowledge acquisition and the simplicity of formulations greatly complicate the concept of neopositivism. This does not make it more attractive to potential followers. Two important theses, which were the cornerstone of this trend, are formulated as follows:
- The solution to any problem requires its careful formulation, therefore logic has a central place in philosophy.
- Each theory that is not a priori should be accessible to verification by empirical methods of cognition.
Postpositivism
Positivism, neopositivism, postpositivism are links of one logical chain. This trend in philosophy appeared at the moment when scientists realized that it was impossible to formulate all scientific theses based solely on
empirical experience . The attempt to exclude metaphysics from philosophy that raised the classical problems of man and mankind was equally defeated. The very recognition of this fact made it possible to say that neopositivism is already an irrelevant system for the formulation of scientific research. The exact non-return was the work of Karl Popper "The Logic of Scientific Discovery." Logic and a critical view of the problem came to the fore, and as for science, under each fact a proper evidence base was needed.
Positivism and neopositivism are morally obsolete for rapidly developing scientific progress. It needed a fresh look and a sound philosophical approach. Postpositivism considered it unacceptable to separate science and philosophy, and fierce opposition to metaphysics and other aspects of the field of speculative conclusions is rejected. Neopositivism in philosophy - this was the ability of logicians to seize power over minds. But they were ruined by simplicity and empiricism against the background of a rapidly approaching future.