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Contributors
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- By Mitchell Aboulafia, Frederick Adams, Marilyn McCord Adams, Robert M. Adams, Laird Addis, James W. Allard, David Allison, William P. Alston, Karl Ameriks, C. Anthony Anderson, David Leech Anderson, Lanier Anderson, Roger Ariew, David Armstrong, Denis G. Arnold, E. J. Ashworth, Margaret Atherton, Robin Attfield, Bruce Aune, Edward Wilson Averill, Jody Azzouni, Kent Bach, Andrew Bailey, Lynne Rudder Baker, Thomas R. Baldwin, Jon Barwise, George Bealer, William Bechtel, Lawrence C. Becker, Mark A. Bedau, Ernst Behler, José A. Benardete, Ermanno Bencivenga, Jan Berg, Michael Bergmann, Robert L. Bernasconi, Sven Bernecker, Bernard Berofsky, Rod Bertolet, Charles J. Beyer, Christian Beyer, Joseph Bien, Joseph Bien, Peg Birmingham, Ivan Boh, James Bohman, Daniel Bonevac, Laurence BonJour, William J. Bouwsma, Raymond D. Bradley, Myles Brand, Richard B. Brandt, Michael E. Bratman, Stephen E. Braude, Daniel Breazeale, Angela Breitenbach, Jason Bridges, David O. Brink, Gordon G. Brittan, Justin Broackes, Dan W. Brock, Aaron Bronfman, Jeffrey E. Brower, Bartosz Brozek, Anthony Brueckner, Jeffrey Bub, Lara Buchak, Otavio Bueno, Ann E. Bumpus, Robert W. Burch, John Burgess, Arthur W. Burks, Panayot Butchvarov, Robert E. Butts, Marina Bykova, Patrick Byrne, David Carr, Noël Carroll, Edward S. Casey, Victor Caston, Victor Caston, Albert Casullo, Robert L. Causey, Alan K. L. Chan, Ruth Chang, Deen K. Chatterjee, Andrew Chignell, Roderick M. Chisholm, Kelly J. Clark, E. J. Coffman, Robin Collins, Brian P. Copenhaver, John Corcoran, John Cottingham, Roger Crisp, Frederick J. Crosson, Antonio S. Cua, Phillip D. Cummins, Martin Curd, Adam Cureton, Andrew Cutrofello, Stephen Darwall, Paul Sheldon Davies, Wayne A. Davis, Timothy Joseph Day, Claudio de Almeida, Mario De Caro, Mario De Caro, John Deigh, C. F. Delaney, Daniel C. Dennett, Michael R. DePaul, Michael Detlefsen, Daniel Trent Devereux, Philip E. Devine, John M. Dillon, Martin C. Dillon, Robert DiSalle, Mary Domski, Alan Donagan, Paul Draper, Fred Dretske, Mircea Dumitru, Wilhelm Dupré, Gerald Dworkin, John Earman, Ellery Eells, Catherine Z. Elgin, Berent Enç, Ronald P. Endicott, Edward Erwin, John Etchemendy, C. Stephen Evans, Susan L. Feagin, Solomon Feferman, Richard Feldman, Arthur Fine, Maurice A. Finocchiaro, William FitzPatrick, Richard E. Flathman, Gvozden Flego, Richard Foley, Graeme Forbes, Rainer Forst, Malcolm R. Forster, Daniel Fouke, Patrick Francken, Samuel Freeman, Elizabeth Fricker, Miranda Fricker, Michael Friedman, Michael Fuerstein, Richard A. Fumerton, Alan Gabbey, Pieranna Garavaso, Daniel Garber, Jorge L. A. Garcia, Robert K. Garcia, Don Garrett, Philip Gasper, Gerald Gaus, Berys Gaut, Bernard Gert, Roger F. Gibson, Cody Gilmore, Carl Ginet, Alan H. Goldman, Alvin I. Goldman, Alfonso Gömez-Lobo, Lenn E. Goodman, Robert M. Gordon, Stefan Gosepath, Jorge J. E. Gracia, Daniel W. Graham, George A. Graham, Peter J. Graham, Richard E. Grandy, I. Grattan-Guinness, John Greco, Philip T. Grier, Nicholas Griffin, Nicholas Griffin, David A. Griffiths, Paul J. Griffiths, Stephen R. Grimm, Charles L. Griswold, Charles B. Guignon, Pete A. Y. Gunter, Dimitri Gutas, Gary Gutting, Paul Guyer, Kwame Gyekye, Oscar A. Haac, Raul Hakli, Raul Hakli, Michael Hallett, Edward C. Halper, Jean Hampton, R. James Hankinson, K. R. Hanley, Russell Hardin, Robert M. Harnish, William Harper, David Harrah, Kevin Hart, Ali Hasan, William Hasker, John Haugeland, Roger Hausheer, William Heald, Peter Heath, Richard Heck, John F. Heil, Vincent F. Hendricks, Stephen Hetherington, Francis Heylighen, Kathleen Marie Higgins, Risto Hilpinen, Harold T. Hodes, Joshua Hoffman, Alan Holland, Robert L. Holmes, Richard Holton, Brad W. Hooker, Terence E. Horgan, Tamara Horowitz, Paul Horwich, Vittorio Hösle, Paul Hoβfeld, Daniel Howard-Snyder, Frances Howard-Snyder, Anne Hudson, Deal W. Hudson, Carl A. Huffman, David L. Hull, Patricia Huntington, Thomas Hurka, Paul Hurley, Rosalind Hursthouse, Guillermo Hurtado, Ronald E. Hustwit, Sarah Hutton, Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa, Harry A. Ide, David Ingram, Philip J. Ivanhoe, Alfred L. Ivry, Frank Jackson, Dale Jacquette, Joseph Jedwab, Richard Jeffrey, David Alan Johnson, Edward Johnson, Mark D. Jordan, Richard Joyce, Hwa Yol Jung, Robert Hillary Kane, Tomis Kapitan, Jacquelyn Ann K. Kegley, James A. Keller, Ralph Kennedy, Sergei Khoruzhii, Jaegwon Kim, Yersu Kim, Nathan L. King, Patricia Kitcher, Peter D. Klein, E. D. Klemke, Virginia Klenk, George L. Kline, Christian Klotz, Simo Knuuttila, Joseph J. Kockelmans, Konstantin Kolenda, Sebastian Tomasz Kołodziejczyk, Isaac Kramnick, Richard Kraut, Fred Kroon, Manfred Kuehn, Steven T. Kuhn, Henry E. Kyburg, John Lachs, Jennifer Lackey, Stephen E. Lahey, Andrea Lavazza, Thomas H. Leahey, Joo Heung Lee, Keith Lehrer, Dorothy Leland, Noah M. Lemos, Ernest LePore, Sarah-Jane Leslie, Isaac Levi, Andrew Levine, Alan E. Lewis, Daniel E. Little, Shu-hsien Liu, Shu-hsien Liu, Alan K. L. Chan, Brian Loar, Lawrence B. Lombard, John Longeway, Dominic McIver Lopes, Michael J. Loux, E. J. Lowe, Steven Luper, Eugene C. Luschei, William G. Lycan, David Lyons, David Macarthur, Danielle Macbeth, Scott MacDonald, Jacob L. Mackey, Louis H. Mackey, Penelope Mackie, Edward H. Madden, Penelope Maddy, G. B. Madison, Bernd Magnus, Pekka Mäkelä, Rudolf A. Makkreel, David Manley, William E. Mann (W.E.M.), Vladimir Marchenkov, Peter Markie, Jean-Pierre Marquis, Ausonio Marras, Mike W. Martin, A. P. Martinich, William L. McBride, David McCabe, Storrs McCall, Hugh J. McCann, Robert N. McCauley, John J. McDermott, Sarah McGrath, Ralph McInerny, Daniel J. McKaughan, Thomas McKay, Michael McKinsey, Brian P. McLaughlin, Ernan McMullin, Anthonie Meijers, Jack W. Meiland, William Jason Melanson, Alfred R. Mele, Joseph R. Mendola, Christopher Menzel, Michael J. Meyer, Christian B. Miller, David W. Miller, Peter Millican, Robert N. Minor, Phillip Mitsis, James A. Montmarquet, Michael S. Moore, Tim Moore, Benjamin Morison, Donald R. Morrison, Stephen J. Morse, Paul K. Moser, Alexander P. D. Mourelatos, Ian Mueller, James Bernard Murphy, Mark C. Murphy, Steven Nadler, Jan Narveson, Alan Nelson, Jerome Neu, Samuel Newlands, Kai Nielsen, Ilkka Niiniluoto, Carlos G. Noreña, Calvin G. Normore, David Fate Norton, Nikolaj Nottelmann, Donald Nute, David S. Oderberg, Steve Odin, Michael O’Rourke, Willard G. Oxtoby, Heinz Paetzold, George S. Pappas, Anthony J. Parel, Lydia Patton, R. P. Peerenboom, Francis Jeffry Pelletier, Adriaan T. Peperzak, Derk Pereboom, Jaroslav Peregrin, Glen Pettigrove, Philip Pettit, Edmund L. Pincoffs, Andrew Pinsent, Robert B. Pippin, Alvin Plantinga, Louis P. Pojman, Richard H. Popkin, John F. Post, Carl J. Posy, William J. Prior, Richard Purtill, Michael Quante, Philip L. Quinn, Philip L. Quinn, Elizabeth S. Radcliffe, Diana Raffman, Gerard Raulet, Stephen L. Read, Andrews Reath, Andrew Reisner, Nicholas Rescher, Henry S. Richardson, Robert C. Richardson, Thomas Ricketts, Wayne D. Riggs, Mark Roberts, Robert C. Roberts, Luke Robinson, Alexander Rosenberg, Gary Rosenkranz, Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, Adina L. Roskies, William L. Rowe, T. M. Rudavsky, Michael Ruse, Bruce Russell, Lilly-Marlene Russow, Dan Ryder, R. M. Sainsbury, Joseph Salerno, Nathan Salmon, Wesley C. Salmon, Constantine Sandis, David H. Sanford, Marco Santambrogio, David Sapire, Ruth A. Saunders, Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, Charles Sayward, James P. Scanlan, Richard Schacht, Tamar Schapiro, Frederick F. Schmitt, Jerome B. Schneewind, Calvin O. Schrag, Alan D. Schrift, George F. Schumm, Jean-Loup Seban, David N. Sedley, Kenneth Seeskin, Krister Segerberg, Charlene Haddock Seigfried, Dennis M. Senchuk, James F. Sennett, William Lad Sessions, Stewart Shapiro, Tommie Shelby, Donald W. Sherburne, Christopher Shields, Roger A. Shiner, Sydney Shoemaker, Robert K. Shope, Kwong-loi Shun, Wilfried Sieg, A. John Simmons, Robert L. Simon, Marcus G. Singer, Georgette Sinkler, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Matti T. Sintonen, Lawrence Sklar, Brian Skyrms, Robert C. Sleigh, Michael Anthony Slote, Hans Sluga, Barry Smith, Michael Smith, Robin Smith, Robert Sokolowski, Robert C. Solomon, Marta Soniewicka, Philip Soper, Ernest Sosa, Nicholas Southwood, Paul Vincent Spade, T. L. S. Sprigge, Eric O. Springsted, George J. Stack, Rebecca Stangl, Jason Stanley, Florian Steinberger, Sören Stenlund, Christopher Stephens, James P. Sterba, Josef Stern, Matthias Steup, M. A. Stewart, Leopold Stubenberg, Edith Dudley Sulla, Frederick Suppe, Jere Paul Surber, David George Sussman, Sigrún Svavarsdóttir, Zeno G. Swijtink, Richard Swinburne, Charles C. Taliaferro, Robert B. Talisse, John Tasioulas, Paul Teller, Larry S. Temkin, Mark Textor, H. S. Thayer, Peter Thielke, Alan Thomas, Amie L. Thomasson, Katherine Thomson-Jones, Joshua C. Thurow, Vzalerie Tiberius, Terrence N. Tice, Paul Tidman, Mark C. Timmons, William Tolhurst, James E. Tomberlin, Rosemarie Tong, Lawrence Torcello, Kelly Trogdon, J. D. Trout, Robert E. Tully, Raimo Tuomela, John Turri, Martin M. Tweedale, Thomas Uebel, Jennifer Uleman, James Van Cleve, Harry van der Linden, Peter van Inwagen, Bryan W. Van Norden, René van Woudenberg, Donald Phillip Verene, Samantha Vice, Thomas Vinci, Donald Wayne Viney, Barbara Von Eckardt, Peter B. M. Vranas, Steven J. Wagner, William J. Wainwright, Paul E. Walker, Robert E. Wall, Craig Walton, Douglas Walton, Eric Watkins, Richard A. Watson, Michael V. Wedin, Rudolph H. Weingartner, Paul Weirich, Paul J. Weithman, Carl Wellman, Howard Wettstein, Samuel C. Wheeler, Stephen A. White, Jennifer Whiting, Edward R. Wierenga, Michael Williams, Fred Wilson, W. Kent Wilson, Kenneth P. Winkler, John F. Wippel, Jan Woleński, Allan B. Wolter, Nicholas P. Wolterstorff, Rega Wood, W. Jay Wood, Paul Woodruff, Alison Wylie, Gideon Yaffe, Takashi Yagisawa, Yutaka Yamamoto, Keith E. Yandell, Xiaomei Yang, Dean Zimmerman, Günter Zoller, Catherine Zuckert, Michael Zuckert, Jack A. Zupko (J.A.Z.)
- Edited by Robert Audi, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
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- The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy
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- 05 August 2015
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- 27 April 2015, pp ix-xxx
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Logical Empiricism and the Sociology of Knowledge: The Case of Neurath and Frank
- Thomas E. Uebel
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- Philosophy of Science / Volume 67 / Issue S3 / 2000
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 01 April 2022, pp. S138-S150
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- 2000
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Logical Empiricism is commonly regarded as uninterested in, if not hostile to sociological investigations of science. This paper reconstructs the views of Otto Neurath and Philipp Frank on the legitimacy and relevance of sociological investigations of theory choice. It is argued that while there obtains a surprising degree of convergence between their programmatic pronouncements and the Strong Programme, the two types of project nevertheless remain distinct. The key to this difference lies in the different assessment of a supposed dilemma facing post-Mertonian sociologists of science.
Otto Neurath, the Vienna Circle and the Austrian Tradition
- Edited by Anthony O'Hear, University of Bradford
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- German Philosophy since Kant
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- 29 September 2009
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- 04 November 1999, pp 249-270
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Summary
It is one of the distinctive claims of Neurath, though not of the Vienna Circle generally, that the Vienna Circle's philosophy was not really German philosophy at all. The relation is, if Neurath is to be trusted, anything but straight-forward. To understand it, not only must some effort be expended on specifying Neurath's claim, but also on delineating the different party-lines within the Vienna Circle.
Some might, of course, be tempted to dismiss the claim as just another cranky idea of the enfant terrible of logical empiricism, but I shall not do so. Neurath's admittedly problematic claim is too important to dismiss. My thesis here is that Neurath's claim holds the key for recovering, as it were, Neurath's Vienna Circle. Developing this thesis in turn helps, first, to deepen the appreciation of the heterogeneity of the Vienna Circle and, second, to provide a valuable vantage point on the pre-history of the Vienna Circle. Moreover, it provides an example of the multi-layered historicity of early analytic philosophy. The philosophy of the Vienna Circle was neither simply a logicised version of British empiricism nor even just an admixture of that and Neokantian elements: still other influences need to be recognised.
In place of detailed excavation, which will be provided elsewhere, I am concerned to bring out the more general interest that my thesis possesses.
Otto Neurath, the Vienna Circle and the Austrian Tradition
- Thomas E. Uebel
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- Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements / Volume 44 / March 1999
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- 08 January 2010, pp. 249-269
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- March 1999
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It is one of the distinctive claims of Neurath, though not of the Vienna Circle generally, that the Vienna Circle's philosophy was not really German philosophy at all. The relation is, if Neurath is to be trusted, anything but straight-forward. To understand it, not only must some effort be expended on specifying Neurath's claim, but also on delineating the different party-lines within the Vienna Circle.
Part 3 - Unity on the earthly plane
- Nancy Cartwright, London School of Economics and Political Science, Jordi Cat, Harvard University, Massachusetts, Lola Fleck, London School of Economics and Political Science, Thomas E. Uebel, London School of Economics and Political Science
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- Otto Neurath
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- 17 December 2009
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- 01 February 1996, pp 167-252
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Summary
TWO STORIES WITH A COMMON THEME
Neurath founded the Unity of Science movement in 1934. For Neurath – a social scientist – the drive for unity was rooted in the great debates between Carl Menger and his thesis examiner, Gustav Schmoller, about the nature of political economy and in Max Weber's insistence that the social sciences are indeed sciences, although sciences of a different type from physics. In this setting, unity of science necessarily meant unity of the social and the natural sciences. For Neurath it meant both more and less: he did not look for a sweeping philosophical union of two great domains of human thought, but rather for the practical unification of the rich variety of special disciplines in all their detail. Unity for him was not a matter of a single metaphysics for natural and social law as Menger advocated nor of one epistemology to mend the rift that Weber imposed; and it was not a unification once and forever. Instead Neurath laboured for different combinations of concrete lessons from different sciences at each and every occasion of rational action. Car nap had proposed an Aufbau, one gigantic structure into which every valid science could in principle be fitted. Unity for Neurath was not a matter of abstract philosophical principle nor a programme for constructing a complete world picture. It was a tool for changing the world; in his own vocabulary ‘an auxiliary motive’. We aim, he argued ‘to create a unified science that can successfully serve all transforming activity.’
List of references
- Nancy Cartwright, London School of Economics and Political Science, Jordi Cat, Harvard University, Massachusetts, Lola Fleck, London School of Economics and Political Science, Thomas E. Uebel, London School of Economics and Political Science
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- Otto Neurath
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- 17 December 2009
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- 01 February 1996, pp 257-282
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Acknowledgements
- Nancy Cartwright, London School of Economics and Political Science, Jordi Cat, Harvard University, Massachusetts, Lola Fleck, London School of Economics and Political Science, Thomas E. Uebel, London School of Economics and Political Science
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- Otto Neurath
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- 17 December 2009
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- 01 February 1996, pp xii-xii
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Introduction
- Nancy Cartwright, London School of Economics and Political Science, Jordi Cat, Harvard University, Massachusetts, Lola Fleck, London School of Economics and Political Science, Thomas E. Uebel, London School of Economics and Political Science
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- Otto Neurath
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- 17 December 2009
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- 01 February 1996, pp 1-6
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Summary
Science and life can be connected, above all by the setting which encompasses both.
Among economists, Otto Neurath is most well known for his views about moneyless economies; among historians, for his work on full socialisation during the short-lived Bavarian revolution of 1919; among educators, for his work on social museums. Among philosophers, he is surely most widely known for his metaphor of sailors rebuilding their ships at sea, which he used to attack foundational accounts of knowledge. This book is about Neurath's philosophy and it is about his political life. And it is about the connection between the two, which left neither of them unchanged.
As a young man near the beginning of his career, fifteen years before the official founding of the Vienna Circle, Otto Neurath wrote his first extended attack on the hunt for certainty in science and in life. There he urged: ‘The thinking of a man during his whole life forms a psychological unity, and only in a very limited sense can one speak of trains of thought per se’ This description perfectly fits Neurath himself. Otto Neurath was a philosopher, a publicist, an activist, a bureaucrat, a scholar, a social scientist and a Marxist. His philosophy will be our central topic. But philosophy for Neurath was not a discipline. His philosophical thought did not evolve within a closed system, new philosophical views emerging from older ones adjusted by new philosophical insights and arguments. Indeed, as Neurath saw it, the disciplines themselves crystallised into separate self-contained systems as a result of useful but false abstraction.
Part 2 - On Neurath's Boat
- Nancy Cartwright, London School of Economics and Political Science, Jordi Cat, Harvard University, Massachusetts, Lola Fleck, London School of Economics and Political Science, Thomas E. Uebel, London School of Economics and Political Science
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- Otto Neurath
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- 17 December 2009
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- 01 February 1996, pp 89-166
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Summary
THE BOAT! NEURATH'S IMAGE OF KNOWLEDGE
Otto Neurath's philosophy – or better: his ‘anti-philosophy’ – found its characteristic expression in the simile named after him, ‘Neurath's Boat’:
We are like sailors who have to rebuild their ship on the open sea, without ever being able to dismantle it in dry dock and reconstruct it from the best components.
In this part we will trace the history of Neurath's Boat. The formulation just quoted is the one most commonly referred to and dates from the heights of the Vienna Circle's protocol sentence debate. With it Neurath cast into dramatic form his insight that knowledge has no secure foundations, that it all depends on how we ‘make it up’. This was not the first time that Neurath employed the simile to this end; it was, in fact, the third of five. The Boat represents a recurring motif in Neurath's work. The ‘first Boat’ dates to 1913.
Neurath's Boat is a simile, a literary figure. Indications are that it is original with Neurath, even though he fashioned it from rhetorical driftwood of his time. The image of the gradual replacement of a ship's components figures in Plutarch's Ship of Theseus, long employed as an example of the problems of identity. It is clear, however, that Theseus' Ship is not at sea, but that its repair took place in the harbour of Athens.
Part 1 - A life between science and politics
- Nancy Cartwright, London School of Economics and Political Science, Jordi Cat, Harvard University, Massachusetts, Lola Fleck, London School of Economics and Political Science, Thomas E. Uebel, London School of Economics and Political Science
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- Otto Neurath
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- 17 December 2009
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- 01 February 1996, pp 7-88
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Summary
A tall, handsome man, bald, with a large forehead, beautifully shaped head, red full beard, and small brown eyes, a slightly Semitic (rather Egyptian) type, with fluent, intelligent, captivating speech.
This is how Ernst Niekisch described Otto Neurath in his diary in March 1919. But it was not only Neurath's outer appearance, his gigantic figure, his behaviour – considered rude by some – that impressed his contemporaries. Over and over again he was characterised as charming, friendly, witty; often as energetic, ambitious and full of purpose, a man of action. William M. Johnston wrote:
Otto Neurath (1882–1945) is one of the most neglected geniuses of the twentieth century. He made innovations in so many fields that even his admirers lost count of his accomplishments.
Over the course of his life Neurath was a business-school teacher, a military officer, a junior university professor, a commissioner for socialisation, a secretary of a housing movement, a museum director – to name but a few of his professions. Neurath's manifold activities correspond to the many stereotypes applied to him. One Austrian minister of education considered him a Communist; an old Social Democratic librarian reported that Neurath was considered an eccentric in the Social Democratic movement of the first Austrian republic. Another contemporary viewed Neurath as a Marxist who had hardly read Marx. Older citizens of Vienna still remember his permanent exhibitions in the town hall. By philosophers he is classed as a radical empiricist, while amongst economists he counts as a daring innovator, if not a misguided visionary.
Frontmatter
- Nancy Cartwright, London School of Economics and Political Science, Jordi Cat, Harvard University, Massachusetts, Lola Fleck, London School of Economics and Political Science, Thomas E. Uebel, London School of Economics and Political Science
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- Otto Neurath
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- 17 December 2009
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- 01 February 1996, pp i-vi
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Preface
- Nancy Cartwright, London School of Economics and Political Science, Jordi Cat, Harvard University, Massachusetts, Lola Fleck, London School of Economics and Political Science, Thomas E. Uebel, London School of Economics and Political Science
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- Otto Neurath
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- 17 December 2009
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- 01 February 1996, pp x-xi
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Summary
This book is made up of three parts. Part 1, Neurath's intellectual biography, is primarily from Lola Fleck's Graz dissertation, with additions by the other authors to fill in missing links with the account of parts 2 and 3. The translation from the German of Fleck's original work is by Martin Anduschuss with revisions by Nancy Cartwright and Thomas Uebel. Part 2 of the book was written by Thomas Uebel and part 3 by Nancy Cartwright and Jordi Cat. Although the book has four different authors, listed alphabetically on the title page, there is a common point of view among them. The work on the book has been a close collaborative effort among Cartwright, Cat and Uebel, and these three authors would like especially to thank Lola Fleck for her generosity in allowing additions and revisions to integrate her dissertation more fully with the remainder of the text. Existing translations have been used where available; translations of previously untranslated materials are by the present authors. Timothy Childers has served as editorial assistant throughout. Figure 1.1 was recreated by George Zouros. Original drawings are by Rachel Hacking. The index was contributed by Mauricio Suárez.
Neurath's own distinctive idea of Ballungen – congested concepts with fuzzy edges – plays a special role in our philosophic discussions. It enters the work of parts 2 and 3 by independent routes. In 1990 Nancy Cartwright went to talk to C.G. Hempel about Neurath. Hempel reported that there were two themes that he felt were really dear to Neurath and central to his thought: the moneyless economy and Ballungen.
List of figures
- Nancy Cartwright, London School of Economics and Political Science, Jordi Cat, Harvard University, Massachusetts, Lola Fleck, London School of Economics and Political Science, Thomas E. Uebel, London School of Economics and Political Science
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- Otto Neurath
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- 17 December 2009
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- 01 February 1996, pp ix-ix
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Index
- Nancy Cartwright, London School of Economics and Political Science, Jordi Cat, Harvard University, Massachusetts, Lola Fleck, London School of Economics and Political Science, Thomas E. Uebel, London School of Economics and Political Science
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- Otto Neurath
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- 17 December 2009
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- 01 February 1996, pp 283-288
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Contents
- Nancy Cartwright, London School of Economics and Political Science, Jordi Cat, Harvard University, Massachusetts, Lola Fleck, London School of Economics and Political Science, Thomas E. Uebel, London School of Economics and Political Science
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- Otto Neurath
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- 17 December 2009
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- 01 February 1996, pp vii-viii
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Otto Neurath
- Philosophy between Science and Politics
- Nancy Cartwright, Jordi Cat, Lola Fleck, Thomas E. Uebel
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- 17 December 2009
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- 01 February 1996
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An international team of four authors, led by distinguished philosopher of science, Nancy Cartwright, and leading scholar of the Vienna Circle, Thomas E. Uebel, have produced this lucid and elegant study of a much-neglected figure. The book, which depicts Neurath's science in the political, economic and intellectual milieu in which it was practised, is divided into three sections: Neurath's biographical background and the socio-political context of his economic ideas; the development of his theory of science; and his legacy as illustrated by his contemporaneous involvement in academic and political debates. Coinciding with the renewal of interest in logical positivism, this is a timely publication which will redress a current imbalance in the history and philosophy of science, as well as making a major contribution to our understanding of the intellectual life of Austro-Germany in the inter-war years.
Conclusion
- Nancy Cartwright, London School of Economics and Political Science, Jordi Cat, Harvard University, Massachusetts, Lola Fleck, London School of Economics and Political Science, Thomas E. Uebel, London School of Economics and Political Science
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- Otto Neurath
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- 17 December 2009
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- 01 February 1996, pp 253-256
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Summary
‘There is no scientific method. There are only scientific methods. And each of these is fragile; replaceable, indeed destined for replacement; contested from decade to decade, from discipline to discipline, even from lab to lab.’ We are apt to take these as special insights of our own postmodern period, the final rejection of the foundationalist myth of a clean, clear and certain scientific edifice which was spawned by the Positivists and nurtured by the Vienna Circle. In this book we have shown how Otto Neurath, working from the heart of Logical Positivism in the first and second Vienna Circles, launched an all-out attack on foundationalism and the myth of the mechanical method. There are, he declared, no unrevisable, incorrigible or undeniable givens. Neither are there guaranteed means of epistemic ascent, nor methods that can get us from what we already accept to new truths or to new falsifications without the need for on-the-spot judgements. Neurath made a radical break with what since has been called the ‘spectator view of knowledge’, the view that knowledge is the reflection of independent reality and that truth consists in some correspondence relation between signifier and the object signified.
To understand Neurath's distinctive alternative it is important to note again the peculiar nature of his self-confessed 'scientism‘. It excelled in the scientific attitude.
Ideas in Context
- Nancy Cartwright, London School of Economics and Political Science, Jordi Cat, Harvard University, Massachusetts, Lola Fleck, London School of Economics and Political Science, Thomas E. Uebel, London School of Economics and Political Science
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- Otto Neurath
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- 17 December 2009
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- 01 February 1996, pp 289-292
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Neurath's Protocol Statements: A Naturalistic Theory of Data and Pragmatic Theory of Theory Acceptance
- Thomas E. Uebel
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- Philosophy of Science / Volume 60 / Issue 4 / December 1993
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 01 April 2022, pp. 587-607
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- December 1993
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Neurath's proposal for the form of protocol statements explicates the multiple embedding of a singular sentence as specifying different conditions for the acceptance of such a sentence as a bona fide scientific datum. Before theories are accepted or rejected in the light of such evidence, however, a further condition must be met which Neurath did not formalize. The different conditions are discussed and shown to constitute a naturalistic theory of scientific data and a pragmatic theory of theory acceptance.