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The epistemology of the Viennese School is quite different from, and even opposed to, that of Marx.

The name of ‘Viennese circle’ was first mentioned in 1929. At the origin it was meant to designate a philosophic association created in Vienna by Moritz Schlick, who has since met with a tragic death. It now designates a group of scientist-philosophers, whose common orientation is a logical empiricism due to quite different historic influences, in particular to the influence of Mach and Avenarius, that of Poincaré and of Duhem, of Peano, of Russell and of James, and to that of Einstein. Besides Moritz Schlick, the chief representatives of this school are Rudolf Carnap, Philipp Frank, Otto Neurath and Hans Reichenbach.

When, about twelve years ago, Einstein came to Paris for important scientific discussions at the Collège de France, I was very much interested in the manner in which, in answer to questions about time and simultaneity, he invariably replied: ‘What does this mean to me, a physicist? Show me a definite method by which measurements can be made physically certain, in terms of which this or that observed result will be given this or that name, and only then will I know what you are talking about.’ It seems to me that the same question underlies the researches of the Viennese school: What does this mean to me as a scientist? The main point for this school is to distinguish those assertions which have a meaning for the scientist from assertions which have no meaning for the scientist.

In pursuing this analysis, the Viennese logicians have thrown light upon the fact that assertions which have a meaning for science are not those which concern the nature or the essence of that which is, but rather regard the connections between the designations or symbols, which our senses, and especially our instruments of observation and measurement, enable us to elaborate concerning that which appears to us in our Erlebnisse, as the Germans say, that is, in our lived experiences. It is not with the being of things that science is occupied; it is with the mathematical links, which can be established between these designations taken from things, and which alone make possible,—I say in the proper order and in the proper plane of science,—a communication or a well established language, an intersubjectivation, submitted to fixed rules of signification.

If I say this table, these words do not mean for the scientist a hidden substance, presenting itself to me under a certain image and with certain qualities, of which substance, moreover, he can know nothing as a physicist. They mean a certain set of perceptions, linked by expressible regularities—the permanent possibility of sensation of which John Stuart Mill spoke—linked to a certain number of mathematical and logistic designations, which render it intersubjectivable.

If I say matter, this word does not mean for the physicist a substance or a substantial principle, about the mysterious nature of which he might question himself and, if wise, answer with Du Bois-Reymond: ignorabimus. For the scientist, the word ‘matter’ only means a certain set of mathematical symbols, established by microphysics and submitted, moreover, to continual revision, wherein certain highly designable observations and measurements are expressed according to the rules of differential calculus or of tensorial calculus and according to the syntax of certain general theoretical constructions, which are also of a provisional character, such as the quantum theory or the syntheses of wave-mechanics.

All this is excellent, but we must have the courage to go to the end. An assertion such as I am or I exist, proclaimed in the manner of Descartes, for example, has no meaning for the scientist, because to have a scientific meaning an assertion must express a stable relation between designations which can finally be reduced to such or such class of sensory experiences; and existence, in the cartesian formula, is not such a designation. An affirmation such as I speak before an audience of human persons, uttered in the manner of common sense, is also deprived of meaning for the scientist; the person is not a sensori-mathematical symbol which can be handled by science. These affirmations will have a meaning for the scientist only when the words ‘existence’ and ‘person’, after an appropriate reformulation, will have lost all meaning for you and for me.

Generally speaking, all reference to being, or essence in itself, is eliminated as lacking meaning for the scientist; and naturally the rational necessities disappear at the same time. What philosophers call the first principles of reason express at best certain regularities likely to be verified in certain cases, and likely not to be verified in others, according to the logical treatment to which we submit our Erlebnisse. The discussions concerning scientific determinism and Heisenberg’s principle of indetermination, have cast light on this point, in so far as the principle of causality is concerned, or more exactly speaking, so far as concerns the recasting of the idea of causality in the domain of experimental science. And I do not see at all why the principle of noncontradiction, duly deprived of all ontological meaning, should not be exposed some day to the same fate, if upon that day the introduction of the simultaneous value of yes and no in a symbolic expression, should enable us to express mathematically a set of observations and measures with more elegance and ease, or to combine in a general synthesis theories drawn from different sections of science, which could not be otherwise conciliated.

All this means that the intellect is a sort of indispensable witness and regulator of the senses in scientific work, remaining all the while—if I may express myself thus—external to this work. The senses and the measuring instruments alone see in science, and the intellect is there only in order to transform, according to the rules of mathematical and logical syntax, the signs expressing what has thus been seen. The intellect is set up in the central office of the factory, where it checks, and submits to more and more extensive calculations, all the indications which are conveyed to it. It remains outside the quarters where the work is being directly accomplished, and is forbidden to enter.