\brief{P.W. Bridgman an Rudolf Carnap, 19. September 1934}{September 1934}

%Sept. 19, 1934.

\anrede{My dear Professor Carnap;}

\haupttext{This is a very belated acknowledgement of your little book The Unity of Science\IC{\unityofscience} which you were so kind as to have sent
to me by the publishers last June. I received it only a short time before starting on the long summer vacation, which has
been occupied with so many things of a non-academic character that I have only just now been able to find the time to
read the book\IC{\unityofscience} carefully enough to form any opinion about it.

In the first place I want to thank you most heartily for your thought in sending me the book\IC{\unityofscience} and also for the pleasure
which I have received in reading it. In general I have taken great satisfaction in the writings of the Viennese
circle\II{\schlickzirkel}, including man of your own, as being more nearly akin to my own views than nearly any other analytical writing
with which I am acquainted, and this last book\IC{\unityofscience} of yours is no exception. The question which I asked myself with regard to
the contention of your book\IC{\unityofscience} was: ``Does this describe what I find myself actually doing in dealing with the situations
contemplated?'', and I found that it did to a very large degree and the point of view of the book\IC{\unityofscience} was correspondingly
satisfactory to me. However, in my own thinking there is always one element which is more prominent than it appears to be
in the thinking of the Viennese circle\II{\schlickzirkel}; perhaps this is because I am primarily an experimental physicist. I find myself
saying that language and thinking are human devices for dealing with certain situations and I therefore expect that
although they may be highly perfected devices, nevertheless they will have imperfections and that they will
not exactly meet all situations in all particulars. Hence I feel that the description in your book\IC{\unityofscience} of what I do or might
do in applying language to situations is an approximate description and that if I searched carefully enough I could find
situations in which it would fail. This is not in itself a criticism of your thesis, for I believe that the same could be
said of any thesis \blockade{that?} could be set up, it is rather a general commentary on a difference
which I find between my general point of view and that of the Viennese circle\II{\schlickzirkel}. I have the feeling of this difference
particularly with regard to logic. Logic is a tool of human thought weilded [sic] by human beings. I do not think it is a
perfect tool, and I believe that there will always be conceptual situations which can never be contemplated with complete
logical serenity if one pushes his analysis far enough. If the Viennese circle\II{\schlickzirkel} said things like this out loud a little
more emphatically I think we would be in almost complete accord.}

\grussformel{Most sincerely,\\
P. W. Bridgman}

\ebericht{Brief, msl., 1 Seite, \href{https://doi.org/10.48666/871585}{RC 102-38-07}; Briefkopf: \blockade{fac simile: Research Laboratory of Physics}, msl. \original{Sept.\,19, 1934}.}
