Logical empiricism treated science as an ahistorical third world of logical knowledge.

Evidence

Logical empiricism, or neopositivism, had projected an ideal of what science ought to be on to scientific practice, without bothering to produce any real scientific discoveries. In accordance with the view, dominant until well into the 1960s, that the development of science was fundamentally determined from within science itself, this approach treated science as being in principle an ahistorical, asocial `third world’ (as Popper termed it) of objective knowledge, the inner structure and development of which were subject only to logic. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 599

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies what neopositivism actually claimed about the nature and autonomy of scientific knowledge.
• XREF: Connects to later philosophy-of-science historiography (Kuhn, Feyerabend) that dismantled this internalist picture. — connects to: Strategic intelligibility forms a third logic distinct from epistemic coherence and sovereignty. — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 15; Science and society mutually constitute each other rather than existing separately — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1599; Philosophy divides into scientific questions and extrarational commitments — Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 2852 (+4 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Strategic intelligibility forms a third logic distinct from epistemic coherence and sovereignty. — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 15; Science and society mutually constitute each other rather than existing separately — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1599; Philosophy divides into scientific questions and extrarational commitments — Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 2852 (+4 more)