Rudolf Carnap

Rudolf Carnap was a German-American philosopher and a leading figure of logical positivism. He argued that metaphysical statements are literally meaningless and that philosophy should be continuous with formal logic and the natural sciences.

Carnap's principle of verification — that the meaning of a statement is its method of confirmation — was a central tenet of the Vienna Circle. His later work on inductive logic and the analytic-synthetic distinction shaped the agenda of philosophy of science for decades, even as Quine's critique challenged his foundational assumptions.