Otto Neurath and the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science

Mikel Breitenstein University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA Global Unity: Otto Neurath and the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science Abstract: Otto Neurath (1888-1945) was a pioneer in modern global information organization, an educator, sociologist, scientist of the early 20th century, and cofounder of the Vienna Circle. The international cooperative goals of shared information among scientists that he envisioned led to the Unity of Science Institute and the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science. The progress towards modern scientific inquiry and theory that he encouraged, with recognition of the historical context, laid the groundwork for others who followed him as critics and refiners of empirical methods. Neurath was in every way a man of his times, but not an ordinary one. He was a social scientist and an intellectual activist, and his radical and original visions of a unified scientific world made him a prescient voice in modern philosophy of science, information, and society. 1. Introduction The International Encyclopedia of Unified Science was a grand project to bring together scientific philosophies from a variety of disciplines, embodied in essays, in a series of printed volumes. It was not intended to contain all knowledge, of course, but would embody the premises and perspectives of leading thinkers from many realms of modern science in the middle of the 20th century. The goal of creating such an encyclopedia had at least three aspects: 1) to define, by classification and explication, the fields of modern science, 2) to establish a documented body of unified topics, and 3) to affirm an interdisciplinary network that would allow scientists from many specialties to come together to solve problems. It was the product of the convergence of several interlocking forces: encyclopedism, logical positivism in general, the Vienna Circle in particular, and the genius of Otto Neurath. During the18th century, encyclopedists created visions of unified knowledge, and by the end of the 19th century, encyclopedism had great momentum and was promoted in intellectual circles. The sciences, with their international languages of symbolic notations, were honored as a new organizing force for the world. The world-view philosophical perspective, incorporating metaphysics, was well established in Germany and in other European countries. Unified systems thinking followed logically. Systems theory helped thinkers in many disciplines to give form to the rapid changes being wrought by technological advance. Utopian social reform became a motivating force. The causes and effects of World War I promoted internationalism in cultural and economic matters. Logical positivism, also called scientism, was a reaction to earlier philosophies that admitted metaphysical considerations. A way of thinking born originally with the Industrial Revolution, it had evolved to a program of thinking that merged scientific inquiry and observations with the philosophical search for meaning and knowledge. The process of “scientization” (Verwissenschaftlichung) took a number of forms (Bambach, 1995, 24). In general, scientism was a term that covered the movements in philosophy, and the sciences, that identified reliable and provable knowledge with the idea of science itself (Bambach, 1995, 27). In economics, medicine, and architecture, an emphasis on the material, the concrete, the functional, was what counted. For positivists, matter was what existed, and only matter was capable of affecting the mind. All philosophical studies, e.g. ontology (what exists?), epistemology (what do we know?) and ethics (what should we do?) should, from the 94 positivist perspective, be predicated on clear knowledge of a mostly scientific nature (Everdell, 1997, 15). Philosophy, under the name “epistemology,” could function as the methodological foundation of all scientific fact (Bambach, 1995, 29). Pre-World War I Vienna was an environment of opposing forces. There were rising trends of social conservatism, nationalism, and biological ideals. The opposing forces included advocates of "Jewish" neo-positivism, of the liberal theory of marginal utility (Grenznutz), of opportunity cost, of psychoanalysis, and of Marxism (Stadler, 1991, 56). Often, their grounding in the materialism of science was joined to their grounding in political concerns for the fair distribution of opportunity and benefits to all of society. As early as 1907, Otto Neurath, a sociologist, Hans Hahn, a mathematician, and Philipp Frank, a physicist, began to meet for intellectual discussions that led eventually to a first “Vienna circle” of thinkers and activists. This circle and the later more famous one were comprised of a dynamic group of well-educated philosophers with strong mathematical and scientific training. Most members embraced positivism to some degree. The final Vienna Circle (Wiener Kreis) was a gathering not of quiet, reclusive thinkers, but of vocal scientists, philosophers, and social activists. Not all members who attended the regular Thursday meetings were equal in recognized status, nor did all agree. They were a loosely organized political and intellectual group. Their new ideas prevailed, and laid a foundation for scientific thinking in the early-mid 20th century. Between 1928 and 1937, the Vienna Circle published ten books in a series named “Papers on Scientific World-View” (Schriften zur wissenschaftlichen), edited by Moritz Schlick and Philipp Frank. In 1930, Rudolf Carnap and Hans Reichenbach became editors of the Journal of Unified Science (Erkenntnis), that was published between 1930 and 1940, and edited toward the end by Neurath, Carnap, and Charles Morris (Murzi, 1998, 2). By the late 1920s, many Circle members experienced increasing difficulty in employment because of their liberal and socialist politics and, often, because of their Jewish identity. Emigration and exile dissipated the ranks steadily through the 1930s, as dangers grew. Circle leader Moritz Schlick, who stayed in Vienna, was murdered in July 1936 by a pro-Nazi student. This event ended the public existence of the Vienna Circle, and in 1938 it was abolished altogether by the National Socialist government. Otto Neurath was an archetypal social activist and idealist. Neurath was born in Vienna on December 10, 1882, into a middle-class scholarly Jewish family. He studied at the University of Vienna and the University of Berlin, and received a Ph.D. from the latter school in 1905. A teaching career at the New Vienna Trade Academy (Neue Wiener Handelsakademie) (1907-1914) was interspersed with travels in Eastern Europe and the Balkans under contract with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (1911-1913). Both ended with his service in World War I (1914-18). After the war, Neurath participated actively in several community planning and service organizations. He worked as a civil servant for the Central Planning Office of the Bavarian Social Republic (later known as the Social Democratic Republic of Bavaria) in Munich during 1919; when it fell he was briefly jailed, although he was not officially a member of the Communist party. Upon release, he went to Vienna and was active in the housing reform movement during the period known as Red Vienna. Infusing all of Neurath’s activities during these years was a commitment to utopian social reform, inspired by his strong belief in Marxist socialism. He was among the first in Vienna to call for a centrally-planned economy based on Marxist concepts, with policy determined by social welfare considerations and by empirical statistical analyses of goods, services, and standards of living (Wilson, 1987, 569). He also was the founder of the Museum for Housing and Town Planning, over which he presided from 1919-24. He was founder and director of the Social and Economic Museum, from 1924 to 1933, when he left Austria. 95 2. Neurath and Scientific Unity Neurath brought to his view of science a historical and dynamic perspective, a recognition of the uncertainty of physical description and the probabilistic nature of scientific prediction (Wilson, 1987, 569). He felt that an essential precondition of all reflection and all theory building was to begin with a vocabulary and set of concepts that were pre-given (Haller, 1991, 124). From that point, new knowledge could be created by the shifting of our concepts as we shift our thoughts. Then a continuous transformation process from old knowledge to new would take off. Neurath had been conspicuous for his demand for a unified language. According to Rudolf Carnap, it was Neurath who suggested the designations ‘Physicalism’ and ‘Unity of Science’ (Haller, 1991, 118). Neurath was fully convinced of and inspired by his commitment to insure that his evolving scientific world-conception should infuse all forms of personal and public life, of teaching, of architecture. Social life was to be purely rational. All his problems and concerns led him toward the goal of the unity of scientific effort (Haller, 1991, 119), for the good of society. 3. Neurath and Internationalism Neurath left Vienna in 1933, due to fear of arrest, and went to The Hague, Netherlands. There he founded and led the International Foundation for Visual Education, from 1933-40 (Wilson, 1987, 568). During that time, he promoted visual education and used a system he had designed, The Vienna Method of Picture Statistics, to develop further an international language, the International System of Typographic Picture Education (ISOTYPE) of over 2000

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