Abstract
The Viennese-born polymath Otto Neurath died on 22 December 1945 in Oxford, a few months after the end of World War Two. A social engineer and sociologist of happiness, Neurath was not only a socially sensitive educator, advocating for any institute and organization that was concerned with the well-being of people; he was also a trained scientist and philosopher. Studying mathematics, economics, history, philosophy, and physics in Vienna and then in Berlin during the early years of the long twentieth century, Neurath became involved in many of the disputes among social and natural scientists that shaped the course of the fields. This short introduction provides the context and describes the aims of the volume. Short summaries of the chapters are also included.
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Notes
- 1.
Morris to Professors and Trustees, Institute for the Unity of Science , 25 August 1966 (RC 102-48-18)
- 2.
Given that most of the papers for the Carnap volume were delivered during the 1950s, the Neurath volume was presumably under construction already in the mid-1950s. See Morris to Carnap, 20 April 1966 (RC 102-48-26).
- 3.
Morris to Professors and Trustees, Institute for the Unity of Science , 25 January 1967 (RC 102-48-12). On Hempel’s case see his letters to Ernest Nagel (2 and 7 September 1966, CH 28–02) and Nagel to Hempel , 3 September 1966 (CH 28–02). Hempel and Nagel were actually against another idea of Morris: to publish a selection of essays (invited and essay-prize style) on the history of the Unity of Science Movement. Both Hempel and Nagel claimed (in the aforementioned letters) that given the interest and commitment to publish the lectures of “John Hopkins Seminars in Philosophy” devoted to logical empiricism it “militates further against the idea of a volume of essays on the Unity of Science.” The collection appeared in 1969 as Achinstein and Barker (1969), and without actually mentioning the unity of science.
- 4.
Not just the whole project decayed slowly, but Neurath’s monograph was considered as the “black eye” of the series already when it was published. See Reisch (2003, 208).
- 5.
- 6.
The German-speaking literature also has many interesting items about semantics, protocol-sentences, pictorial education and about the socio-political context of Neurath’s philosophical worldview. Nonetheless, since many of these works did not have a major and lasting influence on the secondary English literature, we will not discuss them here.
- 7.
It should be noted as well, though, that Neurath’s reception might have been hindered by the lack of conscientious editorial work on his essay-collections. The reviewers of the volume complained that there were no editorial introductions: not a general one for the volume, or shorter ones for the individual essays; no editorial notes except a few general ones; and there was no systematic statement of purpose on their behalf regarding the selection principles and the general philosophical-historical aim of the edition.
- 8.
One interesting exception should be mentioned though: in 1966, the logician David L. Székely published a 66 pages long booklet in his monograph series (“Association for Unification and Automation in Science”) under the title “Otto Neurath and the Unity of Science Movement.” It contained some pages from Charles Morris and a reprint of his 1962 article, “On the History of the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science,” along with some papers and remarks of Székely on Neurath and on his own ideas of unification. See Székely and Morris (1966). In 1967, Morris sent out a circular letter to the Institute for the Unity of Science , because Székely wanted to republish it with the help of the Institute to distribute it in America as well (Morris to the Institute, 20 February 1967, RC 102-48-09). In return, Carnap answered that he was happy to have some of Morris’s papers in one volume, though Székely’s papers were quite weak, thus he did not support the republication of the volume with the help of the Institute (Carnap to Morris, 3 March 1967, RC 102-48-08).
- 9.
- 10.
In his review of Oberdan’s book, Thomas Uebel (1995, 312) called the reader’s attention to the consideration that “admirers of Neurath are bound to find their man less charitably treated then his ideas deserve.” A few years later Uebel (1996, 1999) and Oberdan (1998, 1999) had a debate (one of a few among the logical-empiricism scholars) over anti-foundationalism in the Vienna Circle: though that discussion centered mainly on the interpretation of Schlick, it has also relevance for the contextualization of Neurath as well.
- 11.
From the early 1990s on, it was George Reisch who published several articles about the Unity of Science Movement, the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science , and Neurath’s own “planning-account” of unified science. See especially Reisch (1994). Recently John Symons , Olga Pombo , and Juan Manuel Torres (2011) edited a volume on Neurath and the unity of science, though Thomas Uebel (2013) suggested that most of the volume should be treated with a grain of salt. On the relations between science and politics of Neurath see Cartwright, Cat, and Chang (1991) and (1996).
- 12.
Though it should be mentioned that Thomas Uebel’s more than one hundred pages long editorial introduction to the selection of Neurath’s economical writings is still a landmark in the field.
- 13.
- 14.
Neurath’s lectures were advertised every day before the lectures at the local newspapers: Western Daily Press and the Bristol Mirror (2, 3, 6 November 1933). Neurath’s Birmingham lecture was interconnected with the 1933 Workers Educational Association’s National Conference.
- 15.
In 1933 (17 November, Daily Herald), as it was claimed in a journal article, Neurath called his method as “The Mickey Mouse of Social Facts.”
- 16.
On the significance of Rotha’s films in Britain and his relation to Neurath, see recently Boon (2016).
- 17.
The 1923–1940 Neurath-Carnap correspondence is being now transcribed and edited for publication by Johannes Friedl, Ulf Höfer, Christian Damböck, and Adam Tamas Tuboly.
- 18.
The political dimension of Neurath’s debate with respect to semantical analysis is taken up by George Reisch (2005, Chap. 15.) in his earlier book.
- 19.
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Acknowledgements
During the preparation and edition of this volume, Adam Tamas Tuboly was supported by the MTA BTK Lendület Morals and Science Research Group; by the MTA Premium Postdoctoral, the János Bolyai Research Scholarship and by the “Empiricism and atomism in the twentieth-century Anglo-Saxon philosophy” NKFI project (124970). We are indebted to the Carnap Archive (Rudolf Carnap Papers, 1905–1970, ASP.1974.01, Special Collections Department, University of Pittsburgh) and to the Hempel Archive (Carl Gustav Hempel Papers, 1903–1997, ASP.1999.01, Special Collections Department, University of Pittsburgh) for the permission to quote their materials. All rights reserved.
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Cat, J., Tuboly, A.T. (2019). Introduction. In: Cat, J., Tuboly, A. (eds) Neurath Reconsidered. Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, vol 336. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02128-3_1
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