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Book Reviews on...

Exact Thinking in Demented Times: The Vienna Circle and the Epic Quest for the Foundations of Science by Karl Sigmund
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Exact Thinking in Demented Times: The Vienna Circle and the Epic Quest for the Foundations of Science

by Karl Sigmund

Recommendations from our site

“It goes a lot into Gödel and his incompleteness theorems, which I cover only a little, although these theorems are fundamentally important in the history of logic. So, for anybody who’s interested in the mathematics and the logic of the Vienna Circle, this is a very good accompanying text to mine. I would say he’s slightly less interested in the culture than I am. I was very interested in what motivated the Circle and where they’d come from and their backgrounds and why they came to hold the positions they did. And I was particularly interested in what it was about the Circle that made them such a threat to the fascists and the Nazis. The Sigmund book closes in the late 1930s, whereas I was also interested in what happened to the Circle members after the war begins and they disperse. I’ve got quite a big section on that. So it’s a different kind of book, but complementary.” Read more...

The best books on The Vienna Circle

David Edmonds, Philosopher

“We live in demented times as well, don’t we? I’ve been finding it very troubling reading writers from that era.” Read more...

The Best Economics Books of 2018

Diane Coyle, Economist

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