Carnap, Rudolf (kär`näp, –năp), 1891–1970, German-American philosopher. He taught philosophy at the Univ. of Vienna (1926–31) and at the German Univ. in Prague (1931–35). After going to the United States he taught at the Univ. of Chicago (1936–52) and at the Univ. of California at Los Angeles (1954–62). Carnap was one of the most influential of contemporary philosophers; he is known as a founder of logical positivism logical positivism, also known as logical or scientific empiricism, modern school of philosophy that attempted to introduce the methodology and precision of mathematics and the natural sciences into the field of philosophy.
..... Click the link for more information. and made important contributions to logic, semantics, and the philosophy of science. In Logische Syntax der Sprache (1934; tr. The Logical Syntax of Language, 1937) he defined philosophy as "the logic of the sciences" and considered it a general language whose only legitimate concern could be to describe and criticize the language of the particular sciences. All propositions were held to be either tautological (embodying logical or mathematical systems), scientific (embodying philosophy properly understood), or nonsensical (embodying the nonverifiable propositions of traditional philosophy). Through an analysis of scientific, logical, and mathematical language he revealed the inadequacies of everyday speech. Carnap later modified this extreme view, which rejects almost all of traditional philosophy. His other works include Introduction to Semantics (1942), Meaning and Necessity (1947, 2d ed. 1956), Logical Foundations of Probability (1950), and Einführung in die symbolische Logik (1954; tr. Introduction to Symbolic Logic and its Applications, 1958).

Bibliography

See studies by P. A. Schilpp, ed. (1963, repr. 1984) and R. Butrick (1970).

Carnap, Rudolf

(born May 18, 1891, Ronsdorf, Ger.—died Sept. 14, 1970, Santa Monica, Calif., U.S.) German-born U.S. philosopher. He earned a doctorate in physics at the University of Jena in 1921. In 1926 he was invited to join the faculty of the University of Vienna, where he soon became an influential member of a group of philosophers, mathematicians, and scientists known as the Vienna Circle. Out of their discussions developed the basic ideas of logical positivism. Carnap immigrated to the U.S. in 1935 and taught at the University of Chicago (1936–52). After two years at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton (1952–54), he joined the faculty of the University of California at Los Angeles, where he remained until his death. Carnap sought to give the basic thesis of empiricism—that all concepts and beliefs about the world ultimately derive from immediate experience—a precise interpretation, construing it as a logical thesis about the evidential grounding of empirical knowledge. For Carnap, empiricism is the doctrine that the terms and sentences that express assertions about the world are “reducible” in a clearly specifiable sense to terms and sentences describing the immediate data of experience. His major works include The Logical Structure of the World (1928), The Logical Syntax of Language (1934), Introduction to Semantics (1942), Meaning and Necessity (1947), and The Logical Foundations of Probability (1950).

Carnap, Rudolf (1891–1970) philosopher; born in Rondsdorf, Germany. After earning a doctorate from the University of Jena, he taught at the University of Vienna (1926–31) and became a leader of the Vienna Circle of logical positivists. Emigrating to the U.S.A. in 1935 to escape Nazism, he held posts at the University of Chicago (1936–52), the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton (1952–54), and the University of California (from 1955). A pioneer in the rigorous analytic tradition, he wrote such works as The Logical Syntax of Language (translated 1937), Meaning and Necessity (1947), and Logical Foundations of Probability (1950).