Exact Thinking in Demented Times

This book is a historical account of the social and political environment in which the Vienna Circle evolved in the 1920s and 1930s in Central Europe. From its intellectual origins this loosely defined group of mathematicians, physicists, philosphers, engineers and economists had a short-lived academic existence. The quest to develop a common framework of interdisciplinary scientific reasoning based on logic and empiricism as opposed to scholastic metaphysics was eventually destroyed by rising fascisms in Europe.