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Hans Reichenbach, radio philosopher: a preliminary report

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Abstract

This essay looks at some of the key aspects of Hans Reichenbach’s career as a radio engineer, broadcaster, and producer. It argues that some of the themes of Reichenbach’s logical empiricism can be illuminated by looking at them in relation to his work as a radio engineer during and after World War One. It also argues that attention to the educational activities he undertook in the new broadcast radio medium can help us understand that affinities he saw between logical empiricism and other modernizing projects of Weimar Germany.

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Notes

  1. The literature on these matters is voluminous. There is no better place to start on the neo-Kantian roots of Carnap and Reichenbach than the work of Michael Friedman (1983, 1999). Richardson (1998) is the most sustained discussion of the Aufbau project in relation to neo-Kantianism.

  2. The cultural specificity of the Vienna Circle’s rhetoric is emphasized by Galison (1990, 1996); see also Potochnik and Yap (2006). Good introductions to the Berlin Group’s cultural and philosophical location are Hoffmann (2008), Milkov (2013a, 2013b). Some more specific remarks on Reichenbach’s development are in Stadler (2011).

  3. The account of Reichenbach’s work I give here is fragmentary. Due to the pandemic, the archives have been closed and I have been unable to organize my research as I had hoped.

  4. On von Arco see Fuchs (2004). Reichenbach’s time as a radio engineer rarely receives more than the merest mention, even in his own biographical remarks (Reichenbach 1978a/1978b, p. 2). Reichenbach duly notes the importance of Arco’s radio broadcast station at Nauen in Reichenbach (1924b, pp. 28–29).

  5. Correspondence from Lipman to Reichenbach, dated 1 Aug 1917, Box 15, Folder 57, Hans Reichenbach Papers, 1884–1972, ASP.1973.01, Archives of Scientific Philosophy, Archives & Special Collections, University of Pittsburgh Library System.

  6. There are radio-related documents in several folders in the Archives, principally Box 21, Folder 4; Box 26, Folder 7; Box 29, Folders, 7, 15, 17, and 20, I am indebted to Flavia Padovani for allowing me to look at copies of some of these documents in her possession while the Archives have been closed.

  7. Some aspects of Reichenbach’s overall philosophical relations with Lewin can be found in Padovani (2013) and Heis (2013).

  8. There are several versions of the program passed back and forth between Carnap and Reichenbach; HR 015–50-03 and HR 015–50-06 are two of them.

  9. The final section of Reichenbach (1924b, pp. 83–93) is on “technical improvements and prospects for the future” and mentions of number of technical issues with the sending, receiving, and amplifying of signals, including some of his own work at Huth.

  10. Causal forks already form a key concept in Reichenbach’s views of causation from at least 1924a. (Reichenbach, 1924a/1978b).

  11. The electric oven example has a greater interest than this—for electric ovens do not simply get hotter and hotter; there is a feedback mechanism that works as a thermostat. It is worth noting that the radios whose operation Reichenbach takes some trouble to explain in the radio book (Reichenbach 1924b, pp. 30–42) work precisely because there is a negative feedback mechanism that allows the vacuum tube to be tuned to the signal received via the antenna.

  12. He makes an unexplained gesture at a form of “sociological parallelism” between the development of material and conceptual technology in Reichenbach (1929b/1978b, p. 246).

  13. This is in line with Milkov’s (2013a, p. 296) suggestion that the Berlin Group shows that “the cross-fertilization of business, industry and scientific philosophy … was typical in Germany at the beginning of the twentieth century.” Milkov’s examples are Arco and Paul Oppenheim.

  14. On approaching history of philosophy of science this way, see Richardson (2012). Dewulf (2018, 62ff) has important information on the founding of Erkenntnis, which is a particular example of the activities I have in mind.

  15. On ISOTYPE see, for example, Aray (2015). On Carnap and Esperanto see Carnap (1963, pp. 67–71).

  16. I am grateful for useful comments and encouragement from the guest editors and two anonymous referees.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

    Alan W. Richardson

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This article belongs to the topical collection "All Things Reichenbach", edited by Erik Curiel and Flavia Padovani.

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Richardson, A.W. Hans Reichenbach, radio philosopher: a preliminary report. Synthese 199, 12625–12641 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03345-8

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