Between Physics and Philosophy

Abstract

THE title of this book is unfortunately chosen and is definitely at variance with the italicized statement on p. 103 that “there are no boundaries between science and philosophy”. The suggestion of a sort of no-man's-land between physics and philosophy is indeed quite out of harmony with the ideas which Prof. Frank advocates. He was one of the original members of the “Vienna Circle” of logical positivists (or, as they have later been much better called, “logical empiricists”), and his book is particularly valuable for the authoritative account it gives of the origin and development of this school and its relations with cognate movements such as American pragmatism and the new logic of Russell and Wittgenstein. The book consists of reprinted addresses and articles extending over the period 1908-38, to which is prefixed a short historical introduction. It is clearly written, and should be read by all who are interested, in the philosophical aspects of modern physics.

Between Physics and Philosophy

By Philipp Frank. Pp. v + 238. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1941.) 15s. 6d. net.