User:Leucippus/Sandbox/Logical Empiricism

The women of Logical Empiricism
The view of Logical Empiricism that has been inherited by contemporary philosophy has been a bad one—and in particular—those unfamiliar or prejudiced against exact thinking, science, and the enlightenment—, has been one of a flat-footed, scientistic, and dogmatic group of intellectuals—in short: a straw man. Moreover, historians of analytic philosophy often present a biased androcentric picture of the early years of Logical Empiricism. For example in Jansen-Lauret’s “Women in Logical Empiricism” (WLE, hereafter), Laurent notes that even in “Coffa’s celebrated history of ‘a decade in the philosophical life of what may loosely be called Vienna’ (1991, 1), for example, mentions no female philosopher or logicians.”

The logical empiricist project, or more generally any project related to scientific philosophy and enlightenment values, has been mischaracterised by many as not just “overwhelmingly male” (WLE, loc. cit.) but also, as being somehow “masculine” (loc. cit.). To be sure, some feminist historians have even perceived such female interest in science as, again, somehow incompatible with what a women is, as “at odds with women’s supposed preference for the normative [of ought and not is]” (WLE, loc. cit.). Needless to say this kind of essentialism is particularly insidious—in the way it constricts women’s opportunities in society, and the way it retards scientific progress. For example, Broad writes (2006, 1069) that “twentieth century ... female philosophers -- such as Elizabeth Anscombe, Iris Murdoch, Mary Midgley, and Philippa Foot -- have continued to demonstrate a strong interest in moral theory"”, here Broad myopically focuses on a certain range of female philosopher to the detriment of those involved in science (WLE, loc. cit.).

Indeed, women were not underrepresented in Logical Empiricism compared to other contemporary intellectual movements; the original Vienna Circle had three female members “Olga Hahn-Neurath (nee Hahn, her brother, who was a founding member of the Vienna Circle, was the mathematician Hans Hahn) Rose Rand, and Olga Taussky” (WLE, loc. cit.). Most strikingly, Olga Hahn, unlike the other women, was triply disadvantaged viz. by being a woman, by being Jewish, and also by being blind (loc. cit.). Moreover, the Lvov-Warsaw school of Logic—allied with Logical Empiricism—included nine prominent female philosophers and logicians (according to Wolenski) : Izydora Dąmbska, also Eugenia Ginsberg, Janina Hosiasson, Maria Kokoszyńska, Daniela Tennerowa-Gromska, Maria Ossowska, Seweryna Łuszczewska, Halina Sloniewska, and Janina Kotarbińska; only Ossowska worked on moral philosophy, the rest worked on mathematics, scientific philosophy, logic, and psychology.