Max Planck Institute for the History of Science

Reorganizing Knowledge in Developed science / the DPG in the third Reich /// cooperative Venture
Cooperative Venture
Modern Physics and Scientific Philosophy
The Department has established a close cooperation with the Moritz Schlick Research
Institute at the University of Rostock, jointly forming a Centre for Logic, History and
Philosophy of Science. Ongoing activities include the publication of selected parts
of the literary estate of Moritz Schlick through the ECHO platform, and research
on the relations between modern physics and scientific philosophy in the early 20th
century, focusing on two central figures of scientific philosophy: Moritz Schlick and
Hans Reichenbach. As their published papers, manuscripts and extensive correspon-
dence indicate, both of them were very much involved in the philosophical debate
about the scientific revolutions in modern physics. Reichenbach and Schlick not only
gave an account of the changes of the fundamental concepts of space, time, causality
and probability from a philosophical point of view, as early as the 1910s/1920s, and
thereby anticipated some of the philosophical consequences of the development of
quantum mechanics. Their discussion also led to an epoch-making change in scientif-
ic philosophy itself which was echoed by many physicists and scientific philosophers
at the turn from the 1920s to the 1930s.
MPIWG ReseaRch RePoRt 2006– 2007 49
Left: First page of a letter from Reichenbach
to Schlick (source information: Hans
Reichenbach to Moritz Schlick, October 17,
1920; Literary Estate of Moritz Schlick,
Haarlem, 115/Reich-1/2/3).
Right: Moritz Schlick at the University of
Rostock in spring, 1914 (copyright: George
Moritz H. Van de Velde-Schlick, Vienna
Circle Foundation, Amsterdam)