- Lived:
- 1891–1970 · Ronsdorf (Germany), Jena, Vienna, Prague, Chicago, Los Angeles
- Tradition:
- Logical empiricism; the Vienna Circle's chief engineer
- The Big Idea:
- Philosophy's job is not to discover deep truths about reality but to design and analyze the languages in which knowledge is stated — and there are many good languages, chosen by usefulness, not by which one is "true."
- In their words:
- "In logic, there are no morals."
- If you remember one thing:
- He tried to build every concept of science out of pure logic and raw experience — and when the great construction failed, the tools he forged became the working equipment of modern philosophy, computer science, and the theory of evidence.