Rudolf Carnap Quotes

#1. Logic is the last scientific ingredient of Philosophy; its extraction leaves behind only a confusion of non-scientific, pseudo problems.

Rudolf Carnap

#2. Science is a system of statements based on direct experience, and controlled by experimental verification. Verification in science is not, however, of single statements but of the entire system or a sub-system of such statements.

Rudolf Carnap

#3. Anything you can do, I can do meta

Rudolf Carnap

#4. Metaphysicians are musicians without musical ability.

Rudolf Carnap

#5. It is indeed a surprising and fortunate fact that nature can be expressed by relatively low-order mathematical functions.

Rudolf Carnap

#6. The self is the class (not the collection) of the experiences (or autopsychological states). The self does not belong to the expression of the basic experience, but is constructed only on a very high level.

Rudolf Carnap

#7. If one is interested in the relations between fields which, according to customary academic divisions, belong to different departments, then he will not be welcomed as a builder of bridges, as he might have expected, but will rather be regarded by both sides as an outsider and troublesome intruder.

Rudolf Carnap

#8. In science there are no 'depths'; there is surface everywhere.

Rudolf Carnap

#9. In logic, there are no morals.

Rudolf Carnap

#10. Let us be cautious in making assertions and critical in examining them, but tolerant in permitting linguistic forms.
[Carnap's famous plea for tolerance to which W.V. Quine took exception.]

Rudolf Carnap