Vienna Circle Foundation — Wiener Kreis Stichting

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Moritz Schlick

Otto Neurath

Vienna Circle Foundation

The Vienna Circle Foundation (Wiener Kreis Stichting) was created in 1978 to promote studies related to the work of the members of the Vienna Circle and, even more importantly, to serve as the formal guardian of what was informally known as the Vienna Circle Archive. This archive comprises the scientific papers of Moritz Schlick and Otto Neurath: correspondence, manuscripts, notes, etc. It was the creation of one person: Henk L. Mulder (1921–1998). Through careful detective work he came into contact, first with the daughter of Schlick, who happened to live in the Netherlands, and then with Neurath’s widow, who was living in London. They entrusted the scientific papers of Schlick and Neurath, respectively, to Mulder, who then made sure they were conserved and made available to the scholarly community. (See also Mulder’s recollections of his discovery of the Schlick and Neurath papers in H.L. Mulder, “The Vienna Circle Archive and the literary remains of Moritz Schlick and Otto Neurath,” Synthese, vol. 64 nr. 3 (September 1985), pp. 375–387, which can be downloaded here.) Another important achievement of Mulder was the creation of the Vienna Circle Collection, a series of books containing translations of important publications by members of the Vienna Circle and related authors. In the period 1973–2006 23 volumes were published, initially by D. Reidel Publishing Company, later by Kluwer Academic Publishers, and now by Springer-Verlag. Go here for more information.

Initially, the Board of the Foundation consisted of Mulder (chairman), A.J. Kox, P.H. Polak, G.M.H. van de Velde (Moritz Schlick’s grandson), and J.F.A.K. van Benthem. After Mulder’s death, Van Benthem became chairman; in addition B. Willink joined the Board.

Vienna Circle Archive

In 1992 the Vienna Circle Archive was transferred to the Noord-Hollands Archief in Haarlem, not far from Amsterdam, which is the main Dutch repository for scientific archives. A detailed finding-aid has been prepared by Reinhard Fabian (Graz); it is also electronically available. A microfiche version of the archive has also been made. Copies of these microfiches were disseminated to various other places; at the time they can be consulted in Vienna (Institut Wiener Kreis), Graz, Konstanz, and Rostock (only Schlick).

Please note that, although the Vienna Circle Archive can be freely consulted, for publication of archival material written permission of the Vienna Circle Foundation is needed. (For contact, see the email adress below.) Check here for the location and opening hours of the Noord-Hollands Archief.

Vienna Circle Foundation Lecture

One of the recurring activities of the Foundation is the sponsoring of a special lecture, the Vienna Circle Foundation Lecture, to be held (preferably yearly) by a distinguished philosopher of science, at an appropriate occasion. So far there have been six Vienna Circle Foundation Lectures:

• 1999: Patrick Suppes (Stanford), “Language and the Brain,” at the 11th European Summer School in Logic, Language and Information, Utrecht;
• 2000: Theo Kuipers (Groningen), “Interfaces between Logic, AI, Cognition and Philosophy of Science: Some Challenges for Computational Logic of Scientific Cognition,” at the 12th European Summer School in Logic, Language and Information, Birmingham;
• 2002: Shahid Rahman (Lille), “Would the Real Logic of Science Please Stand up? Some Reflections on the Vienna Circle’s International Encyclopedia of Unified Science,” at the symposium “Modern Perspectives on the Pioneers”, Amsterdam;
• 2003: Elliot Sober (Madison), “Likelihood, Model Selection, and the Duhem-Quine Problem,” at the 14th Amsterdam Colloquium;
• 2004: Michael Friedman (Stanford), who spoke about his book The Dynamics of Reason, at a special event organized by the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC) of the University of Amsterdam (where Vienna Circle Foundation chairman Johan van Benthem was one of the other speakers);
• 2005: Hannes Leitgeb (Bristol), “The Logical Structure of Cognition: Lessons from Carnap’s Logical Structure of the World,” at the 15th Amsterdam Colloquium;
• 2006: Ulises Moulines (Munich), “Metatheoretical Structuralism: A General Programme for Analyzing Science,” at the symposium “Structuralism in Science”, organized by the Nederlandse Vereniging voor Wetenschapsfilosofie (Dutch Society for Philosophy of Science), Amsterdam.