Recognition that people are divided by a common language is typically marked by a search for culprit ambiguities – but rarely so when name philosophers are involved, for whom continued talking past each other may seem the easier option.Whether the case of Carnap and Quine fits this profile is my quarry here. I begin with Quine’s conjecture that it was Neurath’s influence that made Carnap introduce the paragraphs into the Aufbau that promised, without elaboration, a conceptual genealogy on a physical basis. I argue that are good grounds to support Quine here. The analysis will be supplemented with remarks about later disagreements between Carnap and Neurath.

This essay examines the very beginning of Carnap and Quine’s philosophical relationship, focusing on Quine’s visit to Europe during the academic year 1932–33, during which he spent five weeks in Prague with Carnap. Verhaegh details what initiated Quine’s trip, the events leading up to his arrival in Prague, and finally the momentous philosophical exchange between Quine and Carnap that began there and that would carry on for the rest of Quine’s career, even after Carnap’s death in 1970.

This essay argues that despite Quine and Kuhn’s reputation for bringing to a close the era of Carnap and logical empiricism as the dominating philosophy of science, Carnap, Quine, and Kuhn all share in rejecting traditional realist and anti-realist analyses of ontology. They all reject a version of what Putnam called metaphysical realism and then also resist making the move to an equally extra-scientific anti-realist position. For all of them, science itself is to be the final arbiter of what there is.

After we have seen how the p-model works, this chapter evaluates the p-model’s methodology with respect to current tendencies in the history and philosophy of science.sketches four interrelated processes. First, the fall of the analytical philosophy of science was accompanied by the historical turn that yielded the emergence of the discipline ‘the history and philosophy of science’. Second, as opposed to the earlier programme of unified science, by now the philosophy of science has acknowledged the pluralism of scientific inquiry. Third, there is also a process that has led to the simultaneous presence of the general philosophy of science and the discipline-specific histories and philosophies of science. Finally, there is a pluralism of the specific histories and philosophies of science within the discipline as well. The p-model fits into these processes.reflects on the basic method applied by the history and philosophy of science, namely, case studies. It outlines the p-model’s answer to the question of why the results of single case studies may be generalised and how they can be selected without bias.is devoted to the question of whether our results can be applied to other fields of linguistic research than those mainstream grammatical approaches that the case studies have focused on.

There is a familiar narrative of the development from Ernst Mach’s 'positivism' to the more sophisticated 'neo-positivism' of the Vienna Circle, with language analysis and formal logic as additional ingredients. But we also see an alternative historiography telling of the rise and decline of scientific philosophy and the genetic theory of learning from Mach to the Vienna Circle. Recent research on Mach uncovers a more complex and multifaceted influence and pluralist reception of his work within the Vienna Circle based on a general appreciation of his empiricism and his idea of the unity of science. This chapter reconstructs the complex and diverse reception of Mach by main members of the Vienna Circle, showing the inherent pluralism based on the common anti-Kantian and 'late Enlightenment' consensus between empiricism and pragmatism, with Mach figuring as a critic of 'school philosophy' and a pioneer of contemporary history and philosophy of science. The thesis of a strong positive reception and further development and extension (regarding language and logic) of Mach’s doctrines with a critical distance vis-à-vis academic metaphysical philosophy is demonstrated as a manifestation of Mach’s function as a role model and predecessor of Viennese Logical Empiricism from the 'First Vienna Circle' to the heyday of the Schlick Circle.

The Norwegian philosopher Arne Næss lived and worked at his mountaintop cabin Tvergastein, which was located as far as possible from the social realm, yet close enough to suggest various ways of improving both the household of nature and society. Being situated above everybody else environmentally, socially, and intellectually resulted in a bipolar ecophilosophy in which the good environmental life on the mountaintop and Tvergastein were juxtaposed with the evils down in the valley and urban life in general. This contrast would evolve in Næss and his friends’ thinking into a more general contrast between the clean and environmental healthy Norway and a contaminated and unhealthy globe in need of Norwegian environmental wisdom. The high mountains represented what was clean while the city was dirty and polluted, both literally and morally. Tvergastein served Næss and his ecophilosophy compatriots as a material representation and manifestation of a rich life with simple means. First among these friends was Peter Wessel Zapffe, along with Sigmund Kvaløy and Nils Faarlund. They came to mobilize for the Mardøla demonstration (1970), a defining event for environmentalism in Norway, in which taking a stand on hydropower developments would distinguish friends from foes.