Otto Neurath Economic Writings Selections 1904–1945

Abstract

Nineteen selections from Otto Neurath's economic writings document the breadth and development of his interests and views from his student days in Vienna to his last years in Oxford, while highlighting aspects of his work most directly linked to his work in the philosophy of science and the contributions with the most economic relevance today. Part 1 features Neurath's work from 1904 to 1917 as an economic historian of antiquity, his historical and empirical study of war economics, and his policy advice for the anticipated peacetime economy. Part 2 presents Neurath's metatheoretical reflections about social science from 1909 onwards, issuing in his development of an alternative conceptual structure for economic inquiries in 1917. Part 3 focuses on Neurath's contribution to the post-World War I socialization debates in Germany and Austria, employing his conceptual innovations in a practical-political capacity in the period 1919-25. Part 4 contains later reflections, from the 1930s and 1940s, on issues of planning and democracy, the predictive aspects of empirical social science and its descriptive-critical potential as part of the unified science program of logical empiricism, and the fate of the movement of logical empiricism itself. Name index.