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Home , Unity of science

Mikel Breitenstein University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA

Global Unity: 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 . 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 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 of science, information, and society.

1. Introduction The International Encyclopedia of Unified Science was a grand project to bring together scientific from a variety of disciplines, embodied in essays, in a series of printed volumes. It was not intended to contain all , 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 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 , was well established in Germany and in other European countries. Unified systems thinking followed logically. 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. , also called , 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 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 , 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?), (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 (Everdell, 1997, 15). Philosophy, under the name “epistemology,” could function as the methodological foundation of all scientific (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 and Philipp Frank. In 1930, and became editors of the Journal of Unified Science (), 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 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 ‘’ 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 simplified pictures that he had invented in 1923 for representing statistical data.

Figure 1. Neurath ISOTYPE Figure 2. Neurath ISOTYPE

Through his pictorial system, complex were to be transformed into pictures that should yield a coherent and relevant story. According to Neurath

Reading a picture language is like making observations with the eye in everyday experience: what we may say about a language picture is very like what we may say about other things seen by the eye….Our experience is that the effect of pictures is frequently greater than the effect of words, specially at the first stage of getting new knowledge….pictures whose details are clear to everybody are free from the limits of language; they are international. Words make division, pictures make connection (Müller, 1991, 228) 96

There were direct and systematic connections between Neurath’s symbolic designs and his concept of encyclopedism. Pictures projected his elements of encyclopedism into non-discursive representation (Müller, 1991, 229). The Vienna Method of Picture Statistics could therefore be considered a continuation of the elimination of metaphysics, said Rudolf Carnap, by replacing metaphysical elements with more precise aspects of symbols ((Müller, 1991, 230). In The Hague, Neurath’s vision of unified science was given even further implementation. He set up the Unity of Science Institute in 1936 as a department of the Mundaneum Institute. The next year it was renamed the International Institute for the Unity of Science, with Neurath, Charles Morris, and Philipp Frank as the executive committee (Morris, 1969, ix). Two other committees were formed there. One was the Organization Committee of the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, composed of Neurath, Rudolf Carnap, Philipp Frank, Joergen Joergensen, Charles Morris, and Louis Rougier. Another was the Organization Committee of the International Congresses for the Unity of Science, with the same membership as the Encyclopedia committee, with the inclusion of L. Susan Stebbing. The First International Congress for the Unity of Science was held in Paris in 1935. Five more were held before the war interrupted them. At the first congress the idea for an encyclopedia, Neurath’s long envisioned project, was discussed and approved by a vote. The object of both the congresses and the encyclopedia was to keep scientists informed of each others work and thereby to promote integration, understanding, and unity of action applied to a problem (Bogner, 1995, 616). Contributors to the encyclopedia (many of whom also were members of the Vienna Circle), had been scattering since the early 1930s, mostly to England and the U.S. Neurath himself had to leave the Netherlands, and he went to England in 1940 (crossing the Channel in a small boat) (Sigmund, 1995, 29). He became a professor of at Oxford University. This second disruptive move, and the complications of the war, impeded Neurath’s work on the encyclopedia. Only two volumes of a planned twenty-six were produced. Hope for more ended when, on a Saturday night, December 22, 1945, while working at his desk at Oxford, Neurath died of a stroke. He was 63 (New York Times, Dec. 27, 1945, F25). Neurath’s death, and the continued post-war turmoil, caused changes and delays in the original plans to publish the first two volumes in the early 1940s. Some authors had to be replaced, and some were seriously delayed in finishing their monographs. Not until 1969 were the nineteen monographs (which were published separately earlier) and the bibliography and index brought together. When this part of the encyclopedia was completed, without Neurath, the vision for more was gone. According to Rudolf Carnap and Charles Morris at the time of publication, no plans were made to proceed further with the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science (Carnap & Morris, 1969, vii). Although Neurath declared himself an enemy of philosophy, his radical and original visions of a unified scientific world, an enlightened and empowered populace, and the weaknesses of absolutist belief in (Rutte, 1991, 81), made him a prescient modern philosopher of science and society. 97

Figure 3. Otto Neurath

4. The Encyclopedia Neurath began working on the idea of the encyclopedia as early as 1920. His first discussions were with and Hans Hahn, and then with Rudolf Carnap and Philipp Frank. According to Rudolf Carnap and Charles Morris, the encyclopedia was meant as a manifestation of the unity of science movement, along with the six International Congresses for the Unity of Science, the Journal of Unified Science (formerly called Erkenntnis), and the Library of Unified Science (Carnap & Morris, 1969, vii). Much of what is known now about Neurath’s establishment of the encyclopedia is available from the documentation of that time recorded by Charles W. Morris (Morris, 1969, ix). The two introductory volumes, of ten monographs each, would comprise Section 1, called Foundations of the Unity of Science. Neurath had ideas for two or three other, larger sections. Section 2 (perhaps six volumes, 60 monographs) was to deal with methodological problems involved in the and in the systematization of science. Emphasis was to be on the confrontation and discussion of divergent points. Section 3 (eight volumes, 80 monographs) would address the actual state of systematization of the special sciences and the connections between them. Neurath also contemplated a Visual Thesaurus that might be an adjunct to the Encyclopedia. Further, he conceived of a Section 4 that would “exemplify and apply methods and results from preceding three sections to such fields as education, , law, and medicine.” (Morris, 1969, xi) The original plan was for a total of twenty-six volumes containing 260 monographs. (Carnap & Morris, 1969, vii). Neurath imagined editions in many languages, and contributors from Western and Asian countries. Only the first two volumes of the Encyclopedia were published. They comprised Section 1 of the larger plan. Neurath was editor-in-chief of the encyclopedia, with Rudolf Carnap and Charles Morris as associate editors. Its Advisory Committee was composed of leading scientists of the day. Some names we still recognize, but others are not so familiar: Niels Bohr, Egon Brunswik, J. Clay, John Dewey, Federigo Enriques, , Clark L. Hull, Waldemar Kaempffert, Victor F. Lenzen, Jan Lukasiewicz, William M. Malisoff, Richard von Mises, G. Mannoury, Ernest Nagel, Arne Naess, Hans Reichenbach, Abel Rey, , L. Susan Stebbing, Alfred Tarski, Edward C. Tolman, Joseph H. Woodger. 98

References Bambach, C. R. (1995). Heidegger, Dilthey, and the crisis of . Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Bogner, J. (1995). The Vienna Circle. T. Honderich (Ed.), The Oxford companion to philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Carnap, R. & Morris, C. (1969). Preface. Foundations of the Unity of Science, vol. 1, Nos. 1-10. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Cartwright, N. & Uebel, T. E. (1995). Otto Neurath. T. Honderich (Ed.), The Oxford companion to philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Everdell, W. R. (1997). The First Moderns: Profiles in the origins of twentieth-century thought.Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Friedman, M. (n.d.). Philosophy of logical positivism. http://www.indiana.edu/~koertge/ SurFried.html. Taken 11/13/98. Haller, R. (1991). The Neurath principle: Its grounds and consequences. T. E. Uebel (Ed.), Rediscovering the forgotten Vienna Circle. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Heylighen, F. (1998). Towards a global brain: Integrating individuals into the world-wide electronic network. http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/papers/Gbrain-Bonn.htm. Taken 10/9/98 Institute Vienna Circle. (1998). The Vienna Circle—Historic outline. http://hhobel.phl.univie.ac.at/wk/. Taken 11/13/98. Janik, A. & Toulmin, S. (1973). Wittgenstein’s Vienna. New York: Simon & Schuster. Kern, S. (1983). The of time and space, 1880-1918. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Köhnke, K. C. (1991). The rise of neo-Kantism: German academic philosophy between idealism and positivism.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Morris, C. (1969). On the of the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science. In Foundations of the Unity of Science, vol. 1, Nos. 1-10. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Excerpts from an article originally published as “On the History of the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science” in , 12, 1960, 517-21.) Müller, K. H. (1991). Neurath’s theory of pictorial-statistical representation. T. E. Uebel (Ed.), Rediscovering the forgotten Vienna Circle. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Murzi, M. (1998). Vienna Circle. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/v/viennaci.htm. Taken 11/13/98. Neurath, O., Carnap, R., &. Morris, C., Eds. (1955). International encyclopedia of unified science. Vol. 1, Nos. 1-5. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Neurath, O., Carnap, R., & Morris, Eds. (1955). International encyclopedia of unified science. Vol. 1, Nos. 6-10.Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Neurath, O., Carnap, R., & Morris, C., Eds. (1970). Foundations of the unity of science: Toward an international encyclopedia of unified science. Vol. 1, Nos. 1-10. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Neurath, O., Carnap, R, & Morris, C., Eds. (1970). Foundations of the unity of science: Toward an international encyclopedia of unified science. Vol.2., Nos. 1-9. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Neurath ISOTYPE Figure 1. www.math.yorku.ca/SCS/Gallery/icons/neurath.jpg Taken 2/28/06. Neurath ISOTYPE Figure 2. www.philart.de/articles/images/isotype5.jpg Taken 2/28/06. Neurath Photograph. Figure 3. wikipedia. Taken 2/28/06. 99

New York Times. F25, December 27, 1945. Rothe, A., ed. (1947). Current biography: Who’s news and why, 1946. New York: The H. W. Wilson Co. Rutte, H. 1991. The philosopher Otto Neurath. T. E. Uebel (Ed.), Rediscovering the forgotten Vienna Circle. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Sigmund, K. (1995). A philosopher’s mathematician: Hans Hahn and the Vienna Circle. The Mathematical Intelligencer17, no.4: 16-29. Stadler, F. (1991). Aspects of the social background and position of the Vienna Circle at the University of Vienna. T. E. Uebel (Ed.), Rediscovering the forgotten Vienna Circle. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Uebel, T. E. (1992). Overcoming logical positivism from within: The emergence of Neurath’s in the Vienna Circle’s protocol sentence debate. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Wells, H. G. (1938). World encyclopaedia. M. Kochen, Ed.. (1967) The growth of knowledge. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Wilson, F. (1987). R. Turner, Ed., Thinkers of the twentieth century,. 2nd ed. Chicago: St. James Press.

Appendix -- The Publication History and Contents of the Encyclopedia All editions of the monographs and combined volumes of the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science were published by the University of Chicago Press. From 1938 to 1962, the essays that make up the first two volumes of the Encyclopedia were published as separate monographs, paperbound. In 1955, a two-volume cloth-bound edition of the contents of the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, Volume 1 was published. In this edition, Volume 1, Part 1 contained Numbers 1-5, and Volume 1, Part 2 contained Numbers 6-10. In 1970, Volume 2, Numbers 1-9 and Bibliography were published in one cloth-bound volume. At this time, the title became Foundations of the Unity of Science: Toward an International Encyclopedia of Unified Science. In 1971, Volume 1, Numbers 1-10 of this set was published. Volume 2 of this set is still in print (as of August 1998). Volume 1 is out of print.

Volume I: (Dates indicate publication data of monograph edition, where known.) Number 1. Otto Neurath, ed. 1938. Encyclopedia and unified science. Part 1: Otto Neurath. Unified science as encyclopedia integration. Part 2: Niels Bohr. Analysis and synthesis in science. Part 3: John Dewey. Unity of science as a social problem. Part 4: Betrand Russell. On the importance of logical form. Part 5: Rudolf Carnap. Logical foundations of the unity of science. Part 6: Charles W. Morris. Scientific empiricism. Number 2. Charles W. Morris. 1938. Foundations of the theory of signs. Number 3. Rudolf Carnap. 1939. Foundations of and mathematics. Number 4. Leonard Bloomfield. 1939. Linguistic aspects of science. Number 5. Victor Fritz Lenzen. 1938. Procedures of empirical science. Number 6. Ernest Nagel. 1939. Principles of the theory of probability. Number 7. Philipp Frank. 1946. Foundations of . Number 8. Erwin Finlay-Freundlich. Cosmology. Number 9. Felix Mainx. 1955. Foundations of . Number 10. Egon Brunswik. 1952. The conceptual framework of psychology. 100

Volume II: Number 1. Otto Neurath. 1944. Foundations of the social sciences. Number 2. Thomas S. Kuhn. 1962. The structure of scientific revolutions. Number 3. Abraham Edel. 1961. Science and the structure of ethics. Number 4. John Dewey. 1939. Theory of valuation. Number 5. Joseph Woodger. 1939. The technique of theory construction. Number 6. Gerhard Tintner. 1968. Methodology of mathematical economics and econometrics. Number 7. Carl G. Hempel. 1952. Fundamentals of concept formation in empirical science. Number 8. Giorgio De Santillana and Edgar Zilsel. 1941. The development of and empiricism. Edgar Zilsel. Problems of empiricism. Number 9. Jørgen Jørgensen. 1951. The development of logical empiricism. Bibliography and Index. Herbert Feigl and Charles W. Morris.