In this highly influential 1935 text, Jean Cavailles, after describing
the historical sociological characteristics of the so-called “Vienna Circle”,
turns to an analysis of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, and
three of its thesis specifically which he considers to be central to the under-
standing of their ideas. Vienna Circle : a diverse group of philosophers and
scientists, and philosopher-scientists, and scientists-turned-philosophers,
from the whole array of disciplines, mathematics to social sciences, that
met regularly at the University of Vienna in the 1920s and 1930s until
the rise of far-right politics forced them into exile, or killed them. Before
Nazism, they organized meetings and talks to make sense of important ad-
vances and works of the sciences of their times; discussions out of which
emerged theirs, which Cavailles renders here for us.