Otto Neurath was a very versatile and important 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 he also had studies in economics, mathematics and history.
In this article we will talk about the life and career of this thinker through a biography of Otto Neurath ; We will see his studies and areas of application, his life path in Vienna and abroad, his creation of the well-known ISOTYPE language, thought and finally his contributions, works in the field of knowledge.
Otto Neurath was a very versatile man. Neurath stood out mainly for being the promoter of 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, meaning, 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 that exist between things, beyond purely linguistic issues.
Since graduating, Otto Neurath He was closely linked 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 pedagogy through the image, which was born in Vienna and over time would end up spreading through branches in Berlin, Amsterdam, London, Prague, New York and Moscow. At Oxford, he founded an institute of the same kind: the Oxford Institute for Visual Education.
In Vienna, he was director of the Vienna Museum of Society and Economy and He was part of the Vienna Circle which was considered a group that served as the ideological and organizational nucleus of one of the currents that 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 artists: Marie Neurath (who would end up being his wife) and Gernt Arnzt. This language was characterized by being able to express all types of messages and information exclusively visually
Otto Neurath’s objectives were to transmit information about society and economy, in a clear, simple, easy and accessible way, designed for a post-war population that at that time had high rates of illiteracy.
So, It aimed to ensure that any citizen, regardless of their studies, was 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 delivering information, through a simple and easy method of teaching and at the same time learning.
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, the communication of important problems related to any area of knowledge was viable, through a symbolic language based on images.
The ISOTYPE language It consisted of a dictionary of symbols with a meaning and a grammar that gives rise to the appropriate rules to assign meanings.
In creating the dictionary, the two graphic artists Marie Neurath and Gerd Arntx defined and engraved in wood hundreds of synthetic drawings, which were sufficient to nominally represent all types of things belonging to reality: people, spaces, objects, ideas, cultures. , etc.
With the creation of this dictionary, Otto Neurath structured a series of ways to combine symbols, providing them with functional values for the syntactic construction of the language Let’s give an example so that it is better understood: a symbol for a jacket and another for a store serve to make a new one that means shoe store.
Career abroad
Otto Neurath’s career spanned various regions. Between 1931 and 1934 He made frequent trips to the Soviet Union, where he worked at the Moscow Institute for Visual Statistics This would lead to consequences, and he would end up threatened with arrest in Vienna after the Austrian fascists took power.
Later, Otto Neurath traveled directly from Moscow to exile in The Hague, Holland. From this event a new association would emerge with various graphic artists who would end up working with him on the ISOTYPE language model.
In Holland, he extended his ISOTYPE language, and it would end up being called the Viennese method of Pictorial Statistics; Later, it was further developed and called the International System of Education by Typographic Figures.
The ISOTYPE program was further expanded in Oxford, England, after Neurath had to leave the Netherlands with the takeover of the country by Nazi forces in 1940. Otto Neurath subsequently moved to the University of Reading (Oxford, United Kingdom), until his death on December 22, 1945.
Thought
Neurath’s thought has been documented and labeled “physicalism” , characterized by a tendency to take the language to more scientific fields such as physics. That is, language itself ends up being considered a physical act.
Furthermore, Otto Neurath always showed interest in the practical aspect, and was aware of and sensitive to the problems related to the application of theoretical principles in the social field.
Plays
Of his notable works and contributions, the following are of special relevance:
