Logical positivism, also known as logical empiricism or neopositivism, is a philosophical movement that arose in Vienna in the 1920s. Its central thesis is the verification principle, which holds that a statement is meaningful only if it can be empirically verified or confirmed. Logical positivists believed that scientific knowledge is the only kind of factual knowledge, and that all traditional metaphysical doctrines are to be rejected as meaningless. The movement aimed to find a natural and important role for logic and mathematics and to find an understanding of philosophy according to which it was part of the scientific enterprise.

Logical positivisms fall reopened debate over the metaphysical merit of scientific theory, whether it can offer knowledge of the world beyond human experience (scientific realism) versus whether it is but a human tool to predict human experience (instrumentalism) . Logical positivism failed to solve many of the central problems it generated for itself, including the failure to find an acceptable statement of the verifiability criterion of meaningfulness.

In summary, logical positivism is a philosophical movement that emphasizes the importance of empirical verification or confirmation in determining the meaningfulness of statements. It aimed to find a natural and important role for logic and mathematics and to find an understanding of philosophy according to which it was part of the scientific enterprise. However, it failed to solve many of the central problems it generated for itself.