The Murder of Professor Schlick: The Rise and Fall of the Vienna Circle

It is not unusual to speculate on the contrary-to-fact implications of political assassinations. Lincoln's is the classic case in point, but we need only think of Julius Caesar, Gandhi, or John Kennedy, if we require further examples. One totally neglected case in this context is that of Moritz Schlick. One of the remote consequences of his murder, on June 22, 1936, which was most definitely a political assassination, is that today's academic world may well have been an entirely different one if he had gone on to lead the Vienna Circle into exile. That group of young philosophers of science had formed as he assumed the University of Vienna's chair of natural philosophy in 1922. A quarter of a century later, the entire English-speaking world (and Scandinavia) was in thrall to “logical positivism,” a caricature of scientific philosophy as the circle conceived it but an incredibly powerful intellectual standpoint, for all that. The view that all genuine knowledge can be quantified not only dominated philosophy but transformed the nature of universities to the point of threatening the very existence of the humanities, which could scarcely meet this demand. The polemical and oversimplified view of Rudolf Carnap's strong program for scientific philosophy simply found no place for disciplines based on mere description (ethnology) or on understanding complex interlinked constellations of events as they develop over time (history and its myriad allied disciplines).The die was cast, and the humanities became saddled with an inferiority complex that, even today, they have only partially shaken off. Only disciplines that employed mathematical methods in aid of rigorous explanation, working collectively in networks like those of physics or chemistry, were worthy of being institutionalized at universities. Since the humanities were, for the most part, embodied in individual researchers burning the Midnight Oil as they pondered the Eternal Verities, they were disqualified as sciences. They would have to reform themselves radically or disappear. The battle commenced, and sensitive observers can attest that, administrative rhetoric to the contrary, it still goes on. Had Schlick lived on, the pluralism and tolerance that was part of his view of the world might well have carried more influence than the more radical elements in the group ultimately did, and so the humanities might well have fared better in a more secure environment than they have done.Edmonds's The Murder of Professor Schlick does not venture into such speculations. Instead, it offers us a vibrant, suspense-filled narrative replete with as much information as the reader can digest (and more). Briefly, Edmonds presents a fully detailed, complex version of the high drama of the rise and decline of logical positivism in both its philosophical and its political dimensions, complete with vivid portraits of the characters whose thought and personalities supplied that movement with its dazzling dynamism. They include such characters as Schlick himself; the irrepressible Otto Neurath, who had been a minister in the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic; Rudolf Carnap, the circle's standard-bearer; Ludwig Wittgenstein, its unwilling ideal; Bertrand Russell, its Promethean inspiration; the eccentric Kurt Gödel; the rabbi Josef Schächter; the clever Englishman A. J. Ayer; America's rising star, W. V. Quine; the perennial contrarian, Karl Popper; the unfortunate Friedrich Waismann, doomed to failure in all his efforts; the tragic Edgar Zilsel, who committed suicide in American exile; and several frequently neglected women, such as Rose Rand, Olga Hahn, Marie Reidemeister, and Olga Taussky. In addition, the strong Jewish presence in the circle and the surrounding anti-Semitism that was a continuing stumbling block to it are clearly and powerfully described.These are but highlights of Edmond's narrative, but they are proof positive that his study is where to begin an encounter with the Vienna Circle and thus with the philosophical view that, more than any other, has conferred its character on modern thought and deeply molded people who have never heard of it.

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