Otto Neurath was an important and very multifaceted Marxist philosopher . Born on December 10, 1882 in Vienna, he was an important philosopher and sociologist who developed several projects throughout his career.

Otto Neurath, not only had knowledge in the area of philosophy and the study of society, but also had studies in economics, mathematics and history.

In this article we will talk about the life and trajectory of this thinker through a biography of Otto Neurath ; we will see his studies and fields of application, his life trajectory in Vienna and abroad, his creation of the well known ISOTYPE language, thought and finally his contributions, works in the field of knowledge.

Biography of Otto Neurath

Otto Neurath was a very multifaceted man. Neurath stood out mainly for being the driving force behind the Vienna Method of graphic language, also called ISOTYPE language .

During his youth he dedicated himself to the study of economics and social sciences abroad, graduating at the age of 24 in Berlin, Germany. He was closely linked to the field of philosophy of language , known as one of the branches of philosophy that studies everything related to language. That is, the study of concepts such as truth, learning, meaning, sense, creation of language, experience, thought, and finally the use of language, communication and interpretation, always from a linguistic point of view.

Otto Neurath postulated that it was not legitimate to carry out research on the relationships between things, beyond purely linguistic issues.

Trajectory as a thinker

Since graduating, Otto Neurath has had close ties to both the University of Berlin and the academic circles of Vienna .

He founded the Mundaneum Den Haag Institute – Stichting voor Beeldpaedagogie, an institute dedicated to education through images, which was born in Vienna and would eventually spread to branches in Berlin, Amsterdam, London, Prague, New York and Moscow. In Oxford, he founded a similar institute: the Institute for Visual Education in Oxford.

In Vienna, he was director of the Museum of Society and Economics in Vienna and was part of the Vienna Circle , which was considered an ideological and organisational nucleus of one of the currents he defended: logical positivism, a theory that emerged during the early 20th century and which postulated that the only way to achieve knowledge is through those experiences that are based on sense perception.

The ISOTYPE language

The ISOTYPE language was a type of visual communication created by Otto Neurath during 1937, accompanied by two graphic designers: Marie Neurath (who would become his wife) and Gernt Arnzt. This language was characterised by its ability to express in an exclusively visual way all kinds of messages and information .

Otto Neurath’s objectives were to succeed in transmitting information about society and the economy in a clear, simple, easy and accessible way, designed for a post-war population that at that time had high rates of illiteracy.

Thus, aimed to make any citizen, regardless of their studies, capable of understanding the complexity of the world and its nuances and thus, make them real participants in the issues of the world. Otto Neurath defended the search for a new way of making information available, through a simple and easy method of teaching and learning at the same time.

Otto Neurath defined the ISOTYPE language as “a method containing a visual dictionary and a grammar; a new visual world comparable to that of the word”. In this way, it was feasible to communicate important problems related to any area of knowledge, through a symbolic language based on images.

The ISOTYPE language consisted of a dictionary of symbols with a meaning and a grammar that gives rise to the appropriate rules for assigning meanings.

In the creation of the dictionary, the two graphic designers Marie Neurath and Gerd Arntx defined and engraved on wood hundreds of synthetic drawings, which were sufficient to represent in a nominal way all kinds of things belonging to reality> people, spaces, objects, ideas, cultures, etc.

With the creation of this dictionary, Otto Neurath structured a series of ways of combining symbols, providing them with functional values for the syntactic construction of language . Let’s take an example to make it easier to understand: a symbol of a jacket and another of a shop are used to make a new one that means shoe shop.

Career abroad

Otto Neurath’s career spanned several regions. Between 1931 and 1934 he made frequent trips to the Soviet Union, where he worked at the Institute for Visual Statistics in Moscow . This would have consequences for him, and he would end up being threatened with arrest in Vienna after the Austrian Fascists took power.

Later, Otto Neurath travelled directly from Moscow to exile in The Hague, Holland. From this event would come a new partnership with various graphic artists who would end up working with ‘him in the model of the ISOTYPE language.

In the Netherlands, he extended his ISOTYPE language, and it would end up being called the Viennese method of Pictorial Statistics; later, it was developed further and called the International System of Education by Typeface.

The ISOTYPE program was further expanded in Oxford, England, after Neurath had to leave the Netherlands with the seizure of the country by Nazi forces in 1940. Subsequently, Otto Neurath moved to the University of Reading (Oxford, UK), until his death on 22 December 1945.

Thought

Neurath’s thought has been documented and labeled as “physicalism” , characterized by a tendency to take language to more scientific fields such as physics. That is, language itself ends up being considered a physical act.

In addition, Otto Neurath was always interested in the practical side, and was aware of and sensitive to the problems related to the application of theoretical principles in the social field.

Works

Of his outstanding works and contributions, the following are of particular relevance:

  • Empirical sociology (1931)
  • Unified Science and Psychology (1933)
  • The development of the Vienna Circle and the future of logical empiricism (1935)
  • International Encyclopedia of Unified Science (1938).

Bibliographic references:

  • Cartwright, N., Cat J., Fleck L, and Uebel T.E. (2008). Otto Neurath: Philosophy between science and politics. Cambridge University press.
  • Ruiza, M., Fernández, T., and Tamaro, E. (2004). Biography of Otto Neurath. In Biografías y Vidas. The online biographical encyclopedia. Barcelona, (Spain).
  • Symons, J., Pombo, O., Torres, J.M. (2010). Otto Neurath and the Unity of Science. Springer Publishing House.