Editing Logical positivism (section)

===Post-war period===

Following the [[World War 2|Second World War]], logical positivism—now referred to by some as ''logical empiricism''—turned to less radical objectives in the [[philosophy of science]]. Led by [[Carl Gustav Hempel|Carl Hempel]], who expounded the [[covering law model]] of [[scientific explanation]], the movement became a major underpinning of [[analytic philosophy]] in the English-speaking world<ref>{{harvnb|Uebel|2008}} 2.1</ref> and its influence extended beyond philosophy into the [[social science]]s. At the same time, the movement drew intensifying scrutiny over its central problems<ref name="Smith1986">{{cite book |first=L.D. |last=Smith |year=1986 |title=Behaviorism and Logical Positivism: A Reassessment of the Alliance |publisher=Stanford University Press |isbn=978-0804713016 |lccn=85030366 |page=314}}</ref><ref name="Bunge1996">{{cite book |first=M.A. |last=Bunge |year=1996 |title=Finding Philosophy in Social Science |publisher=Yale University Press |isbn=978-0300066067 |lccn=lc96004399 |page=317 |quote=However, neo-positivism failed dismally to give a faithful account of science, whether natural or social. It failed because it remained anchored to [[sense data|sense-data]] and to a [[phenomenalism|phenomenalist]] metaphysics, overrated the power of [[inductive reasoning|induction]] and underrated that of [[hypothesis]], and denounced [[philosophical realism|realism]] and [[materialism]] as metaphysical nonsense. Although it has never been practiced consistently in the advanced natural sciences and has been criticized by many philosophers, notably Popper (1959, 1963), logical positivism remains the tacit philosophy of many scientists.}}</ref> and its doctrines were increasingly criticised, most trenchantly by [[Willard Van Orman Quine]], [[Norwood Russell Hanson|Norwood Hanson]], [[Karl Raimund Popper|Karl Popper]], [[Thomas Samuel Kuhn|Thomas Kuhn]] and [[Carl Gustav Hempel|Carl Hempel]].<ref name=sep-vienna-circle/>