A Study Of Carnap 's Space Philosophy

Carnap is one of the founders of logical empiricism, and he is also the epochal figure in the theoretical development of science and philosophy. Especially in terms of space philosophy, Carnap made a great contribution. On the one hand, Carnap criticized the traditional metaphysics that he thought these questions which the traditional metaphysics talked about were false issues. The development of philosophy, especially the development of space philosophy should not be far away from the research of space science, on the contrary, it should keep up with scientific developments and connect with them firmly and merely. Because in that times, scientific developments had been excluded in the development of philosophy and they were never relative to the development of philosophy. This point of view was obvious among the performance of Carnap’s doctoral thesis, because of the wide boundaries between disciplines, it wanted to make a choice at an interdisciplinary field, and however the choice was denied immediately. For Carnap, one of the most meaningful contributions that he made was that he broke the disciplinary boundaries between physics and philosophy and made a connection between them. On the other hand, the hot debate between the different disciplines and different areas for space was endless and they both lacked of effective communication at that times. Carnap thought that problem quite depended on the different concept of space; precisely they didn’t make different classifications of space concept in different areas. For that thing, Carnap did classify them and only through this classification could we recognize the space for the clear distinction among the different areas. Only through this could we form a good form of communication and common understanding between the various disciplines. Finally,Carnap’s greatest contribution was spacing the process of scientific logicalization of symbol. Although the philosophy of space through the development of symbolic logic was called by the Russell, the development of the new philosophy was practiced and promoted by Carnap. Carnap played an unparalleled role on the research. What’s more, new method actually advanced the space theory. On the pace of the research, Carnap clarified a lot of issues for us, especially on the guiding principles in the development of space science; Carnap believed that the history of space theory was mainly applied to applicability. This guiding principle also enhanced the practical applicability.According to the study of Carnap’s space philosophy, it is very instructive and valuable for our space theory study. This article makes a simple exploration and analysis trying to build a skeleton frame of Carnap’s thought. The article generally comprises three parts:firstly, in the first part of the context, sorting out the development of Carnap’s philosophical space thought. Carnap mainly influenced by the symbolic logic and linguistic analysis of doctrine. Under this influence, he had formed his own unique space philosophy. Then, in the second part, analyzing the formation of Carnap’s thought. This analysis comes from the basic casual and the formation of the space theory starts from the assumption which needs a scientific way to describe. In additions, the description is based on the science-based way. Moreover, a complete theoretical system of space eventually comes true. In the study of space science, it has a number of different space theories. Carnap believed that the essentially of these space theories didn’t make any difference because of the same description of the same object. In the last part, Carnap summarized the meaning and the influence of his philosophy space thought. His thought not only made a great contribution to the development of the space science, but also contributed the development of philosophical study. For one thing, it guided the development of space science. For another, it affected the development of the whole field of philosophy.