At the beginning of the 20th century, Moritz Schilick (was one of the first thinkers engaged in discussing relativistic physics in the conception of the world and particularly the concept of “causality”) assumed the professorship of philosophy at the University of Vienna and under his influence a school composed of personalities such as Rudolf Carnnap, Otto Neurath, Fredrich Waismann, Otto Neurath, Kurt Gödel and Hans Han. The Vienna circle, therefore, had an affinity for logical positivism, inspired by historical empiricismand the recent contributions of mathematical logic. The most notable consequence of this school was that since then, the sciences were divided between “formal” (logic and mathematics), which are essentially analytical and factual, that is, oriented to physical reality (e.g. biology, psychology, sociology), which are directly or indirectly based on perception.
The inner lines of the Vienna Circle were divided according to the interpretations of the “protocolary clauses” (statements that correspond to an empirical basis for confirmation or refutation):
Phenomenalism The “protocolary clauses” would be elementary statements, records of immediate experiences of the subject (sensory data)
Physicalism The “protocolary clauses” would be descriptions of physical objects and it was this opinion that finally prevailed.
The logical positivism was criticized for its reductionist character. Moreover, his view of scientific progress assumes that widely confirmed theories are immune to future deconfirmation, because the results of scientific research would be merely cumulative. On the other hand, doubts will be raised about the analytical-synthetic dichotomy and arguments will be sought against the distinction between theoretical and observational terms (in order to deny the existence of a nuetral empirical basis). Much of the critical body of this perspective implies emphasizing the sociological and historical aspects over the purely logical ones.