Positivisms old and new

pp. 9-33

in: Paolo Parrini, Knowledge and reality, Berlin, Springer, 1998

Abstract

The last forty years of research in the philosophy of science have been characterised by the crisis of the standard conception of scientific theories. This model was developed by the logical positivists, especially Carnap and Hempel, over a long period of time: from the formation of the Vienna Circle in the late twenties, up to the end of the process of liberalisation of empiricism in the late sixties (roughly when the new philosophy of science was asserting itself).