PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 11 



science and philosophy are not opposed but supplemen- 

 tary. 



FACTUAL DESCRIPTION VS. SYMBOLIC ANALYSIS 



A second theory of the relation between science and 

 philosophy has appeared in recent years among a group of 

 scholars who identify themselves as the Vienna Circle, and 

 are commonly called logical positivists, or logical empiricists. 

 The outstanding representatives of the school are Carnap, 

 Schlick, and Wittgenstein, and they consider themselves 

 the direct descendants of the earlier positivists. For them 

 the dichotomy between science and philosophy has become 

 absolute. To science is assigned the task of both description 

 and explanation; to philosophy is assigned the task of the 

 logical clarification of ideas. "The result of philosophy is 

 not a number of 'philosophical propositions,' but to make 

 propositions clear." * It is not the job of the philosopher, 

 therefore, to talk about the world of empirical facts, but 

 rather to talk about the propositions which one asserts 

 when he claims to be talking about such facts. Thus the 

 subject matter of philosophy is really propositions, and the 

 business of the philosopher is the logical analysis of proposi- 

 tions with a view to determining exactly what they mean. 

 If the propositions which he examines prove to be empirical 

 propositions, i.e., propositions of natural science, he must 

 clarify them by reducing them to other propositions which 

 are capable of direct verification. If the sentences prove to 

 be logical propositions, i.e., assertions about symbols and 

 their interrelations, he must clarify them through consid- 

 eration of the rules of syntax. Often he finds that the appli- 

 cation of these two types of technique reveals that a given 

 sentence is nonsense, i.e., a pseudo-proposition. Most of the 

 propositions of metaphysics as formulated in traditional 

 philosophy prove to be pseudo-propositions; the proposi- 

 tions of epistemology and of ethics reduce, respectively, 



1 L. Wittgenstein, Traclatus Logico-Philosophicus (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 

 1922), prop. 4.112. 



