Language, Truth and Logic

Abstract

THIS excellent compendium of the views and doctrines of the new positivism derived from the scientific empiricism of the Vienna circle and an extreme interpretation of the aims of logic, will no doubt rejoice the increasing number of thinkers who have discovered lately that there is no philosophy at all. Carrying to its limits the methodological scepticism of Hume, the new positivism holds that sense-data are the primary elements of science, from which things and forces are its highly probable inferences. But as regards metaphysics, it should be put out of the way at all costs. Indeed, the imaginative and constructive functions of philosophy must give way entirely to its analytic function: thus the only real aim of philosophy is to get the propositions of science clarified and self-consistent. Language, Truth and Logic By Alfred J. Ayer. Pp. 254. (London: Victor Gollancz, Ltd., 1936.) 9s. net.