Sobre Carnap y el proyecto de un lenguaje universal para la ciencia unificada

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to characterize the idea of universal language underlying Rudolf Carnap’s thought at the time of the  Vienna Circle, when he collaborated in the project of the Unified Science. With regard to this aim the notion of universal language that influenced the evolution of symbolic logic at the end of the 19th Century and the beginning of the 20th Century is  reviewed, and the consequences of the adoption of this notion in the logical theory are stressed. This notion is historically  related to the modern projects of scientific universal languages and has the function of a “regulative ideal”. However, it is  untenable as a framework for the logical syntax. It is shown that Carnap was committed to the idea of a methodological  universality instead, based on the development of formal tools in order to formulate any formal scientific language.