Working with Drs. Thomas Ricketts, Paul Guyer, and Gary Hatfield, Dr. Richardson is examining the late 19th and early 20th century philosophical and scientific background in Germany against which logical empiricism was developed in the 1920s. In particular, he is looking at the problematic of seeking the correct understanding of the role of logic and mathematics in empirical scientific knowledge that guides most of the scientifically oriented epistemological schools (Neo-Kantians, Psychologists, Phenomenologists) in Germany during the fifty years before the rise of logical empiricism. Moreover, he is investigating the methodological remarks of the leading scientists of this time (Helmholtz, Mach, Planck, Poincare, Duhem, Einstein) and the interpretation of those remarks by German philosophers to see how scientific achievements were philosophically understood in this period. This is part of a larger project to understand the philosophical and scientific pressures leading to the development of the though of Rudolf Carnap from his Neo-Kantian first writings through his constructive program of 1928 to mature empiricism in his work in the 1930s.
