Background
Juhos, Belva von was born in 1901.
Juhos, Belva von was born in 1901.
Constant to the ideas of the Vienna Circle, Juhos was one of its few members to remain in Vienna after Schlick’s assassination (1936) and during the Second World War. A man of independent means, he became a lecturer only in 1948.
Juhos’ central interest was in epistemology, especially in its application of science, viewed from the standpoint of the logical positivism of the Vienna Circle. He referred to his method as ‘epistemo-logical’ or ‘epistemo-analytic’, and divided his inquiries into two major classes, formal and material. Formal analysis deals with the logical properties of the concepts and propositions of a science, and the language system to which they belong. Material analysis is concerned to locate the objects denoted by various types of expression. Central among the concepts analysed by Juhos is that of scientific law, a class he divides into two, firstand second-order laws. The first permit predictions only concerning items mentioned in the law; the second permit predictions of a broader kind.Classical physics is analysed as the attempt to bring all phenomena under secondorder laws, which arc laws of proximate action. Again, Juhos paid special attention to relativity theory, regarding the abolition of the Newtonian absolutes of space and time as progress against ‘metaphysical’ elements h| science. He hoped that all such ‘metaphysical elements could be expunged from science, whose propositions are characterized by testabilityconcerning probability theory, Juhos sought to reduce probabilistic statements to the classical, bivalent logic he accepted.