Post #725

Сам Айер пишет: 'I don’t think much of Language, Truth and Logic is true. I think it is full of mistakes. I think it was an important book in its time because it had a kind of cathartic effect', но вряд-ли он до конца осознавал, НАСКОЛЬКО последствия разрушительны. Как так вообще получилось? Начнем с того, что, как вспоминает Брайан Мэгги, в Оксфорде позитивизм стал чем-то вроде марксизма: Rather like Marxism, positivism had seductive appeal and therefore an enormous vogue because it was clear-cut, easy to grasp, and provided all the answers. Like Marxism too, it constituted a ready-to-hand instrument of intellectual terrorism. At the university in which I arrived as a freshman in 1949 there were many who prided themselves on their mastery of it for this purpose. Almost regardless of what anyone said to them on any subject they would run him through with a ‘How would you go about verifying that statement?’ Clever young people were exhilarated by the sense of mastery this gave them.