A Note on Otto Neurath (2) (Special Issue Dedicated to Professor Michio Fujisawa)

This second part of the note deals with a biographical sketch of Otto Neurath, an eminent social scientist and an activist in many areas of social movement. It also gives a description of the political storm which raged about the Wetem intellectual community in the Inter World Wars time. Neurath began his carrier as a social scientist with an cxcellent student of the University of Vienna. He transferred to the Berlin University with his friend Anna Schapire, his later wife. In Berlin he finished his dissertation on the economy of classical antiquity. In 1907, after came back to Vienna, he joined a small group of young scholars, which was to be called by the First Vienna Circle. Every Thursday night, Hans Hahn and his sister Olga, Joseph and Philip Frank, Otto and Anna Neurath and others assembled at a cafe to discuss fundamental problems of science and philosophy. The great scholars, who had strongly influenced these young people, were Ernst Mach, Henri Poincare and Pierre Duhem. After the outbreak of the First World War, Neurath was mobilized and committed to the wartime economy. Before the war, he had already studied the war economics. According to his theory, war economy was a transient phase toward a new planned economy directed by a central planning agency. He thought in such a new system, the deficit of capitalist economy, unemployment and cyclic economic recession, could be overcome. After the War, Neurath had an opportunity to realize his idea in Bavaria Revolution as the Director of the Central Planning Administration of the Bavaria Soviet Republic in 1919. But, this Soviet Republic was soon defeated by the right wing militia. And it had too short life. Neurath was arrested and, was on trial at the military court and convicted. But he was rescued by Max Bauer, the Foreign Minister of the Social Democrats Government of Austrian Republic. Came back to Vienna, he joined the social and education movement of "Red Vienna", and worked as the Director of newly established Socioeconomic Museum, where he developed so many kind of pictorial display, which became the source of his ISOTYPE. He joined the Vienna Circle for scientific philosophy as a core menber and a leftist. Because he believed the anti-metaphysical attitude of the Circle was as progressive as the socialist movement. This attitude was cousistent to the doctrine of the Austro-Marxism. After the coup-de-tat of the Right Wing Administration of Dorfus on 22 February 1934, he should escape to Holland. Then he must go to England, hired by Nazi troops, which invaded Netherlands in 1940. He died suddenly at Oxford in 1945. As an immigrated scholar, he organized the International Conferences for scientific world conception and the unified science: at Paris, Cambridge UK, and Cambridge Ma. USA. Thus, the scientific world conception of Vienna Circle and ISOTYPE influenced the Western intellectual community, especially that of the Anglo-American world.15KJ00004274640研究ノートNotedepartmental bulletin pape