The Vienna Circle
A forum for open discussion on the philosophical foundations of science, birthplace of logical positivism.
Here the typescript of Der Logische Aufbau was read and discussed.
Participants included Schlick, Mach, Boltzmann, Neurath, Waismannn, and Gödel.
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Wittgenstein
A large part of The Tractactus was real aloud and discussed sentence by sentence by the circle, and exerted a strong influence.
From summer 1927 meetings began between Schilck, Waismann and Carnap.
Though Carnap was excluded from the beginning of 1929, he was still exposed to the continuing development of Wittgenstein's view through the systematic expositions which he attempted for the circle.
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Morris and Quine
In 1934 Morris and Quine visited Vienna and also met Carnap in Prague.
They later helped to make Logical Positivism known in America and assisted Carnap in moving to America.
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The Warsaw Group
First contact with the philosophers at Warsaw came when Tarski was invited to Vienna in February 1930 and lectured on metamathematics, which introduced Carnap to the use of formal metalanguages.
Discussions with Tarski and with Gödel helped Carnap towards his theory of logical syntax.
He disagreed with Tarski on the analytic/synthetic dichotomy, which Tarski thought a matter of degree.
Carnap visited Warsaw in November 1930, giving lectures to the Warsaw Philosophical Society, talking privately to Tarski, Lesniewski and Kortarbinski, who were all involved in work on semantics.
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Popper
At this time Popper was also in Vienna, but was not a member of the circle.
Carnap read the manuscript of Logik der Forschung and had discussions with Popper in the summer of 1932.
Though Popper had "similar" attitudes to the circle, Carnap felt that he overemphasised the differences.
Popper criticised "the positivists" and antagonised some of the members of the circle.
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