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Moritz Schlick, the
founder of the Vienna Circle, was born on April 14, 1882
in Berlin. After studying in both Heidelberg and
Lausanne, he returned to Berlin to complete his doctorate
in physics under the direction of Max Planck. Schlick
then held teaching positions at the universities of
Rostock and Kiel before taking the position of Professor
of the Philosophy of Inductive Science at the University
of Vienna in 1922. Schlick, in a similar fashion to Ernst
Mach and Ludwig Boltzmann, his predecessors at Vienna,
had grave doubts in philosophy based on metaphysics. He
founded the Vienna Circle with other scientists and
philosophers such as Rudolf Carnap and Otto Neurath, as a
forum for discussions toward a new direction of
philosophy; one that moved away from metaphysics and
focused on empiricism. Influenced by philosophers such as
Ludwig Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russell, the Vienna
Circle helped formulate the beginnings of logical
positivism.
Schlick helped advance
ideas in the logic of science and ethics, as well as the
philosophy of life and culture. He was interested in
creating a theory of knowledge based on empirical
evidence and symbolic logic. He strongly believed that
direct observation was the only way to verify factual
knowledge, thus renouncing a priori knowledge.
Schlick was a prolific essayist, contributing to the
abundance of publications coming out of the Vienna
Circle. The sheer amount of writing from the group opened
their ideas to many other countries and gave Schlick the
opportunity to be a visiting professor at Stanford
University in 1929. During his time in the United States,
he gave lectures in many cities, thus opening up the
ideas of logical positivism even further.
The remainder of
Schlick’s life was spent in Vienna, where he
continued to advance the philosophy of science. Through
his improvisational-style lectures, Schlick was able to
create for his students the relationship between
expression and knowledge. This lecture style allowed
Schlick to actually perform logical empiricism before his
students; a unique idea that unfortunately was never able
to fully develop due to his sudden and violent death. On
June 22, 1936, Schlick was shot and killed by a mentally
insane student. After his death, the Vienna Circle ceased
to meet, abruptly ending an era in Vienna. It was
Schlick’s insight though, that created one of the
most influential and lasting schools of thought in the
20th century.
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