The first part provides a systematic and in-depth study of the Vienna Circle in the manner of the new historiography of science. Archival material that has remained unpublished to date and more recent research literature are used to refute a number of widespread clichés about "logical positivism". The author discusses not only the history of ideas but also the institutional and socio-cultural context of the Vienna Circle's scientific work and their efforts at adult education. The book thus represents an exemplary study of the rise of scientific thought and its vicissitudes in this century. In the documentary volume, Stadler offers the first comprehensive bio-bibliographical survey of the core and the periphery of the Vienna Circle - with, inter alia, short biographies, a list of publications and the more recent research literature. In "Introduction and Overview" of the book's first part, the author provides a metatheoretical and methodological introduction to the the troubled relation between the history of science and the philosophy of science based on the case of science and and philosophy in Austria and its historiography. Then, by tracing its development in the three metropoles Vienna, Berlin and Prague, he provides an accessible entry to the complex subject of "scientific philosophy". The four chapters of the section "Old Austrian Traces of Scientific Philosophy" deal with the socio-cultural conditios of the so-called "Rise of Scientific Philosophy". Here the specific Austro-Hungarian roots of the movement are surveyed in the thought of figures such as Bernhard Bolzano, Franz Brentano and Ernst Mach, the pioneer of the "scientific world conception" and the prototype Vienna Circle representatives. The author also discusses the historical and theoretical consolidation of the Logical Empiricism in the period between the two world wars. The central section of the book "The Vienna Circle/Logical Empiricism in the First Republic" deals with the intellectual setting of the "late Enlightenment", which forms the basis for the following, historically oriented chapters on the dynamic of the Schlick-Circle in two phases from 1918 to 1938. The first, non-public phase was under the sway of the discussions conducted by Hans Hahn, Moritz Schlick and Rudolf Carnap, occasionally with Ludwig Wittgenstein, the most important philosophical figure outside of the group. The author then proceeds to reconstruct the Vienna Circle's public phase, which extends from the Schlick-Circle from 1929 on to the "Anschluss", revealing the theory dynamics and the extra-mural institutionalization of the Circle in the Verein Ernst Mach and through the Unity of Science conferences and congresses held from 1929 to 1941, with the internationalization of the Circle paralleling its growing isolation within Austria.

Part two offers a comprehensive documentation of the activities of the Vienna Circle. After a diagram survey in the documentation section, the author gives the bio-bibliographical overview mentioned above and then goes on to list the classes and lectures held at the University of Vienna and various institutes of adult education. This second part of the book, conceived of as a reference work, is rounded off with a documentation based on archival material and newspaper sources of the assassination of Moritz Schlick so shrouded in myths and public reactions to this event in 1936/37, and with a list of sources and literature.

Friedrich Stadler, born in Zeltweg (Austria); founder and director of the Institut Wiener Kreis. Professor of History of Science and Theory of Science at the Institute of Contemporary History at the University of Vienna; collaborator of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for History and Society in Vienna; co-editor of the publication series Kleine Bibliothek des Wiener Kreises in stw, Frankfurt/Main, Germany.