The philosophical writings of Otto Neurath, and their central themes, have been described many times, by Carnap in his authobiographical essay, by Ayer and Morris and Kraft decades ago, by Haller and Hegselmann and Nemeth and others in recent years. How extraordinary Neurath's insights were, even when they perhaps were more to be seen as conjectures, aperfus, philosophical hypotheses, tools to be taken up and used in the practical workshop of life; and how prescient he was. A few examples may be helpful: (1) Neurath's 1912 lecture on the conceptual critique of the idea of a pleasure maximum [ON 50] substantially anticipates the development of aspects of analytical ethics in mid-century. (2) Neurath's 1915 paper on alternative hypotheses, and systems of hypotheses, within the science of physical optics [ON 81] gives a lucid account of the historically-developed clashing theories of light, their un realized further possibilities, and the implied contingencies of theory survival in science, all within his framework that antedates not only the quite similar work of Kuhn so many years later but also of the Vienna Circle too. (3) Neurath's subsequent paper of 1916 investigates the inadequacies of various attempts to classify systems of hypotheses [ON 82, and this volume], and sets forth a pioneering conception of the metatheoretical task of scientific philosophy.

Inhalt

1. The Lost Wanderers of Descartes and the Auxiliary Motive (On The Psychology of Decision) (1913).- 2. On The Classification of Systems of Hypotheses (With Special Reference to Optics) (1916).- 3. Ways of the Scientific World-Conception (1930).- 4. Physicalism: The Philosophy of the Viennese Circle (1931).- 5. Physicalism (1931).- 6. Sociology in the Framework of Physicalism (1931).- 7. Protocol Statements (1932).- 8. Radical Physicalism and the 'Real World' (1934).- 9. The Unity of Science as a Task (1935).- 10. Pseudorationalism of Falsification (1935).- 11. Individual Sciences, Unified Science, Pseudorationalism (1936).- 12. An International Encyclopedia of Unified Science (1936).- 13. Encyclopedia as 'Model' (1936).- 14. Physicalism and the Investigation of Knowledge (1936).- 15. Unified Science and Its Encyclopedia (1937).- 16. The Concept of 'Type' in the Light of Modern Logic (1937).- 17. The New Encyclopedia of Scientific Empiricism (1937).- 18. The Departmentalization of Unified Science (1937).- 19. Comments on the Papers by Black, Kokoszy?ska, Williams (1937).- 20. The Social Sciences and Unified Science (1939).- 21. Universal Jargon and Terminology (1941).- 22. The Orchestration of the Sciences by the Encyclopedism of Logical Empiricism (1946).- 23. Prediction and Induction (1946).- 24. Bibliographies.- A. Bibliography of Works Cited.- B. Supplementary List of Works by Otto Neurath [See 'List', Which Is Chapter 12 of Empiricism and Sociology, 1973].- C. Neurath in English.- Index of Names.