   Partly owing to Wittgenstein’s influence, partly directly, Russell’s logical atomism had significant influence on the works of the logical positivist tradition, as exemplified in the works of Carnap, Waismann, Hempel and Ayer.  This tradition usually disavowed metaphysical principles, but methodologically their philosophies owed much to Russell’s approach. Carnap, for example, described philosophy as taking the form of providing “the logical analysis of the language of science” (Carnap 1934, 61). This originally took the form of attempting to show that all meaningful scientific discourse could be analyzed in terms of logical combinations beginning with “protocol sentences”, or sentences directly confirmable or disconfirmable by experience.  This notion of a “protocol sentence” in this tradition was originally modeled after Russellian and Wittgensteinian atomic propositions. The notion of a “logical construction” was also important for how such thinkers conceived of the nature of ordinary objects (see, e.g., Ayer 1952, chap. 3). The view that scientific language could readily and easily be analyzed directly in terms of observables gradually gave way to more holistic views, such as Quine’s (see, e.g. Quine 1951), in which it is claimed that it is only a body of scientific theories that can be compared to experience, and not isolated sentences.  However, even in later works growing out of this tradition, the influence of Russell can be felt.