The Naturalists Return

Abstract

Lrnst Haeckel, intellectual star of late-nineteenth-century Jena, continued a philosophical tradition by drawing on science to address the great questions of epistemology and ethics.' Haeckel would have been surprised to learn that one of his relatively obscure colleagues would help to overthrow that tradition. For many Anglo-American philosophers of our century, Jena is hallowed ground because it is the birthplace of contemporary philosophy. Frege's investigations are commonly viewed as a decisive turn, one that dethroned epistemology from its central position among the philosophical disciplines and that set the philosophy of language in its place.2 In retrospect, we can trace a great lineage from Frege, leading through Russell, Wittgenstein, and Carnap to the professional philosophy practiced in Britain, North America, Australasia and Scandinavia in the postwar years.3 Distinguished by its empha-