Logical positivism

Dejan Vucinic (dejan@mit.edu)
Fri, 25 Apr 1997 15:43:20 -0500


Kathryn:
>>Lise Meitner [snip]
>>attended Max Planck's memorable debates with the logical positivists
>>who declared that atoms simply couldn't exist because they couldn't
>>be seen.

Max More:
> Philosophical nit-pick: The logical positivists would not say this. They
> would say that the question of the existence of atoms is meaningless *if*
> they cannot be observed. Any statement that cannot be broken down into
> directly observable entities is meaningless to the logical positivists.

What would "directly observable" mean? Eyes? Light microscope?
Accelerator? Where does one draw the line?

Regards,

--dv, amateur nit-pick