Home › Authors › Otto Neurath
Otto Neurath Quotes
1882–1945 Austria
Otto Karl Wilhelm Neurath (December 10, 1882 – December 22, 1945) was an Austrian philosopher of science, sociologist, and political economist. Before he fled his native country in 1934, Neurath was one of the leading figures of the Vienna Circle.
Austria Academics Economists Philosophers Sociologists Also known as: Neurath, Otto
Random Otto Neurath quote
10 quotes
At first the Vienna Circle analysed ‘physics’ in a narrower sense almost exclusively; now psychology, biology,sociology. The task of this movement is unified science and nothing less.
Physicalism (1931)
The motivationless theory of goods [transfers] can bridge the gulf between history and exact research by securing the important continuity of the research, being linked to both.
Otto Neurath Economic Writings. Selections 1904-1945 (2004)
All content of science, and also their protocol statements that are used for verification, are selected on the basis of decisions and can be altered in principle.
Quite a few political economists advocate the thesis that a Robinson Crusoe — or what amounts to the same thing, a controlled economy — calculates in terms of profits and losses.
Otto Neurath (1935)
When devotion to men with an urge for new social organization replaces devotion to men with theological illumination and a way of life pleasing to God, then the actions of the innovator and his formulations are often gauged by their significance for human happiness. Behaviour is examined through the happiness it produces, which is an empirical matter; transcendence is overcome.
Empirical Sociology (1931)
In the interest of scientific work, more and more formulations in the unified language of unified science are becoming increasingly precise. No term of unified science, however, is free from imprecision, since all terms are based on terms that are essential for protocol statements, whose imprecision must be immediately obvious to everyone.
Protocol Statements (1932)
The fiction of an ideal language composed of pure atomic statements is as metaphysical as the fiction of Laplace's 'spirit'. Scientific language, with its ever growing equipment of systematic symbol formations, can by no means be regarded as an approximation to such an ideal language.
Protocol Statements (1932)
We are like sailors who on the open sea must reconstruct their ship but are never able to start afresh from the bottom. Where a beam is taken away a new one must at once be put there, and for this the rest of the ship is used as support. In this way, by using the old beams and driftwood the ship can be shaped entirely anew, but only by gradual reconstruction.
Otto Neurath (1921)
‘History’ and ‘Political Economy’ have not been differentiated on the basis of systematic reflection; rather, they have been quite different in origin and conceptual structure. Only on further development of both disciplines are they set closer together and merged into a single science, namely ‘Sociology’, which for about a hundred years past has been assimilating other fields of science.
Empirical Sociology (1931)
Finally it should be noted that the picture education, especially the pictorial statistics, are of international importance. Words carry more emotional elements than set pictures, which can be observed by people of different countries, different parties without any protest; Words divide, pictures unite.
Otto Neurath (1931)