The Leningrad echo of the Vienna Circle (Part 1)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21146/2413-9084-2025-30-1-149-162Keywords:
T.N. Gornstein, L. Wittgenstein, Vienna Circle, Machism, Soviet philosophy, history of physics, ideologization of science, “dialectization of natural science”Abstract
This article is an attempt at a reconstruction of the scientific biography of a Soviet historian and philosopher of science, Doctor of Philosophical Sciences Tatiana Nikolayevna Gornstein (Tatiana Gornstein) (1904–1980). It describes the main stages and areas of Gornstein’s activities and provides a review of her main works. She began her research in 1925, the time of the rapid development of philosophy in the USSR and worldwide, when F. Engels’ “Dialectics of Nature” was first published, an acute philosophical/methodological debate between the so-called dialecticians and mechanists occurred, and the Vienna Circle began to operate systematically. In the 1930s Gornstein was one of the leading Soviet experts in logical positivism, as evidenced by the facts that she was invited to write an article on Empiriocriticism for the Great Soviet Encyclopedia and met with Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951), one of the key philosophers of the 20th century who had a significant impact on the work of the Vienna Circle. The article largely draws on the archival materials, many of which are introduced for scientific use for the first time, and sheds light on many episodes in the history of Russian science and philosophy.
