Otto Neurath

Otto Neurath (1882, Vienna – 1945, Oxford) was an Austrian economist, economic-historian, Wiener-Kreis philosopher and briefly a politician (he served as a minister under the Bavarian Council Republic). Before he was to flee his native country in 1934, Neurath was one of the leading figures of the Vienna Circle.

In 1924, he opened the Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum (GeWiMu) in Vienna, where he devised the Wiener method of visual statistics or isotypes. His objective was to help workers become aware of the economic reality. Two years afterwards he encountered the artist Gerd Arntz, known primarily as a member of the Cologne Progressives group, who settled in Vienna in 1929 to elaborate Neurath’s ideas. When Neurath established the sister institute Isostat in Moscow, Arntz joined him there for extended periods. In 1934 both their operations in Vienna and Moscow were discontinued almost simultaneously. After the civil war in February, the Austro-fascist government of Dolfuss shut down the red GeWiMu – located in the Volkshalle of the Viennese town hall. In Moscow the Isostat fell out of favour, when socialist realism prevailed over ‘anonymity’ and the ‘Western, constructivist, decadent designs.’

Both Neurath and Arntz fled to The Hague, where they compiled statistics for N.W. Posthumus (founder of the International Institute of Social History) in the years 1932-36. In May 1940 Neurath escaped to London, where he ran his fourth institute, the Isotype Institute, from 1942 until his death in 1945. Gerd Arntz took a job at the CBS and attended the review exhibition of his work at the Haags Gemeentemuseum in 1975. (from a newsletter of the International Institute of Social History)

Publications

• with Gerd Arntz, et al., Gesellschaft und Wirtschaft - Bildstatistisches Elementarwerk, Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institut, 1930. (German)
• editor, Einheitswissenschaft book series, 1933-39. (German)
  • Unified Science: The Vienna Circle Monograph Series originally edited by Otto Neurath, now in an English edition, intro. Rainer Hegselmann, trans. Hans Kaal, ed. Brian McGuinness, Dordrecht: Reidel, 303 pp. (English)
• International Picture Language: The First Rules of Isotype, 1936. (English)
• Philosophical Papers 1913-1946: With a Bibliography of Neurath in English, Dordrecht: Reidel, 1983. (English)
• Economic Writings: Selections, 1904-1945, Springer, 2004. (English)

Literature

• Nancy Cartwright, Jordi Cat, Lola Fleck, Thomas E. Uebel, Otto Neurath: Philosophy Between Science and Politics, Cambridge University Press, 1996. Reviews: Mormann (British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 1997), Okruhlik (Int'l Studies in Philosophy of Science 1997), Ryckman (Philosophical Review 1998).
• Nader Vossoughian, "The Language of the World Museum: Otto Neurath, Paul Otlet, Le Corbusier", Transnational Associations 1-2 (January-June 2003), Brussels, pp 82-93.
• Frank Hartmann, "Humanization of Knowledge Through the Eye", in Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy, eds. Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel, 2005, pp 698-707.
• Elisabeth Nemeth, Stefan W. Schmitz, Thomas E. Uebel (eds.), Otto Neurath's Economics in Context, Springer, 2007.
• Nader Vossoughian, Otto Neurath: The Language of the Global Polis, Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2008. [1]
• Jordi Cat, "Otto Neurath", in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2010.
• Sophie Elisabeth Hochhäusl, Otto Neurath - City Planning: Proposing a socio-political Map for Modern Urbanism, Innsbruck University Press, 2011. (English)
• More writings on Neurath by Nader Vossoughian
• Bibliography [2]
• Bibliography

See also

• Gerd Arntz
• Otto and Marie Neurath Isotype Collection

Links

• The Otto Neurath Bibliography Pictorial Statistics
• Neurath's page at WirtschaftsMuseum (in German)
• Neurath at MedienPhilosophie.net
• Otto Neurath (1882-1945): A brief biography
• Web dossier: After Neurath at Stroom Den Haag
• Neurath at Wikipedia