Abstract
This essay describes correspondence in the late 1930s among John Dewey, Charles Morris, Otto Neurath and Rudolf Carnap concerning Dewey’s contributions to Neurath’s International Encyclopedia of Unified Science. The essay argues that Dewey especially viewed the Encyclopedia as a socially and culturally important project, even though he had reservations about logical empiricism’s approach to understanding values in science and scientific method. Around Dewey’s specific objections to intertheoretic reductionism, this paper argues, were clustered more general concerns about values in science, in culture, and the need to oppose the popular neo-Thomist critique of science and scientific philosophy.
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References
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Neurath, Otto, Niels Bohr, John Dewey, Bertrand Russell, Rudolf Carnap & Charles Morris. 1938. “Encyclopedia and Unified Science.” International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, v. 1, n. 1, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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Reisch, G.A. (2005). Doomed in Advance to Defeat? John Dewey on Logical Empiricism, Reductionism, and Values. In: Nemeth, E., Roudet, N. (eds) Paris — Wien. Veröffentlichungen des Instituts Wiener Kreis, vol 13. Springer, Vienna. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-211-33320-7_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-211-33320-7_13
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