Economic Writings: Selections 1904-1945

Vienna Circle Collection

by Otto Neurath, Th.E Uebel (Editor), Robert S. Cohen (Editor)

This book makes available for the first time in English a substantial part of Otto Neurath's economic writings. The essays and small monographs translated here extend from his student years to his last ever finished piece. They chart not only Neurath's varied interests in the economic history of antiquity, in war economics and schemes for the socialisation of peacetime economies, in the theory of welfare measures and social indicators and in issues of the theory of collective choice, but also show his philosophical interests emerging in his contributions to seminal debates of the German Social Policy Association. This volume shows that Neurath's important contributions to the socialist calculation debate are but one aspect of a many-sided and original oeuvre. The translations are preceded by an introductory essay by one of the editors which contextualises the selections by locating them in the various debates of the time that provided their original setting. This book is of interest to economists, philosophers of social science and of economics as well as to historians of philosophy of science and of analytic philosophy.

Genres: Economics

573 pages, Hardcover

First published September 3, 2004

About the author

Austrian philosopher of science, sociologist, and political economist, noted for interpreting logical-positivist thought as a basis for behaviourist social and economic theory. Before he fled his native country in 1934, Neurath was one of the leading figures of the Vienna Circle, who championed ‘the scientific attitude’ and the Unity of Science movement. He denied any value to philosophy over and above the pursuit of work on science, within science and for science. And science was not logically fixed, securely founded on experience nor was it the purveyor of any System of knowledge. Uncertainty, decision and cooperation were intrinsic to it. From this naturalistic, holistic and pragmatist viewpoint, philosophy investigates the conditions of the possibility of science as apparent in science itself, namely, in terms of physical, biological, social, psychological, linguistic, logical, mathematical, etc. conditions. His views on the language, method and unity of science were led throughout by his interest in the social life of individuals and their well-being. To theorize about society is inseparable from theorizing for and within society. Science is in every sense a social and historical enterprise. It is as much about social objectives as it is about physical objects, and about social realizations as much as about empirical reality. Objectivity and rationality, epistemic values to constrain scientific thought, were radically social. The topics of political economy and visual education, based on the ISOTYPE language, are concrete legacies that have regained relevance, urgency and interest. These are discussed in the supplements, Political Economy and Visual Education.

Reviews

[Raya Paul Gracchus · Rating 1 out of 5]

In-kind planning deserves a better advocate than Otto Neurath.