The Logical Structure of the World

Introduction

Carnap wrote the book in the mid-1920s and used it as his habilitation thesis in Vienna; it appeared in Berlin in 1928. It sketches a “constitution system” in which all concepts of science are defined step by step from a narrow basis. As basis Carnap chooses “elementary experiences” – momentary total experiences – and a single relation between them, the recollection of similarity. From these he constructs qualities, the senses, physical objects, other minds and cultural objects. He presents this experiential starting point, “methodological solipsism”, as one possible choice among others. Nelson Goodman developed the method further, and Quine’s “Two Dogmas” attacked the reductionism behind it.

Connections

Builds on

• Principia Mathematica1910 · Bertrand Russell
• Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus1921 · Ludwig Wittgenstein

Criticized in

• Logistic Neopositivism: A Critical Study1930 · Eino Kaila
• Logical Positivism and Analysis1933 · Susan Stebbing
• The Logic of Scientific Discovery1934 · Karl Popper
• Two Dogmas of Empiricism1951 · W. V. O. Quine
• Epistemology Naturalized1969 · W. V. O. Quine

More works by Rudolf Carnap

• 1929The Scientific Conception of the World: The Vienna Circle
• 1932The Elimination of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language