Schlick, Moritz 1882-1936
German philosopher

Born in Berlin, he first studied physics at the universities of Heidelberg, Lausanne and Berlin. He taught at Rostock and Kiel, and was Professor of Inductive Sciences at Vienna (1922-36), where he became a leader of the Vienna Circle of logical positivists. He elaborated their central verificationist theory of meaning and extended it to the field of ethics, which he argued was a factual science of the causes of human actions. An early exponent of Einstein's relativity theories, his major works include Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre (1918, 'General Theory of Knowledge') and Fragen der Ethik (1930, 'Problems of Ethics'). He was murdered by a deranged student on the steps of the university library.