Writing a captivating book about a bureaucrat and his statistical modelling techniques is impossible? Erwin Dekker’s biography of Jan Tinbergen proves otherwise. As he has done before, Dekker tells the history of economic thought and methodology as part and parcel of general intellectual and cultural history. Nevertheless, he never downplays or neglects the analysis of inner-scientific problem situations. Drawing on rich archival material and conversations with Tinbergen’s family, students, and colleagues, Dekker vividly introduces us to an extraordinary personality and career. Tinbergen of course was so much more than a Dutch bureaucrat and Nobel Prize winning econometrician. He became a key figure in transforming the discipline of economics. Perhaps even more sweeping – and reaching far beyond academia – is Tinbergen’s re-invention of the role played by economists in the modern nation state and in the international community. Ultimately, he spearheaded a shift in the public notion of how malleable “the economy” is by conscious policy efforts – or so Dekker convincingly exhibits and critically discusses. Anybody reflecting on the proper role of scientific experts in democratic societies, may want to pick up Dekker’s entertaining and thought-provoking study.

Political economy was a core area of Otto Neurath’s work. His economic works are closely linked to the other intellectual fields in which he was active (e.g. philosophy of science, visual education). The essay traces the development of Neurath’s theory of war economy and his socialization theory on the one hand, and looks at his attempts to implement these concepts on the other. It concludes by asking to what extent Neurath’s contributions can contribute to a discussion on the future of socialism?

Der Mathematiker und Philosoph Friedrich Waismann (1896–1959) ist bekannt dafür, dass er in den 1920er- und 1930er-Jahren zum Gesprächspartner des Philosophen Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) wurde und dessen Werk Tractatus logico-philosophicus im Zuge eines Buches darstellen sollte. Jedoch summieren sich seit einigen Jahren die Arbeiten, welche Waismann für weitaus mehr als nur einen Gesprächspartner Wittgensteins charakterisieren. Bücher wie Friedrich Waismann-Causality and Logical Positivism (2011) oder Friedrich Waismann. The Open Texture of Analytic Philosophy (2019) verdeutlichen Waismann als selbstständigen Philosophen sowie seine Bedeutung für die Entwicklung des Wiener Kreises. Das steigende philosophische Interesse an Waismann ist der Grund dafür, ihn als wichtigen Vertreter der analytischen Philosophie und analytischen Wissenschaftstheorie historisch eingehender zu betrachten. Der vorliegende historisch-philosophische Bericht verdeutlicht eine komprimierte Darstellung von Waismanns Leben in Wien. Vor allem die Zeit vor der Berufung seines Mentors und Förderers Moritz Schlick (1882–1936) an die Universität Wien 1922, lag bis heute weitgehend im Dunkeln. In dem Bericht wird auf diese Zeit ein besonderes Augenmerk gelegt, aber auch Waismanns Leben im Exil wird kurz beleuchtet. Der Bericht beruht auf meiner Masterarbeit Friedrich Waismann. Eine historisch-philosophische Betrachtung (2019), in welcher auch erstmals Waismanns Studienzeit von 1917 bis 1922 detailliert rekonstruiert wurde. Darüber hinaus wurde der Bericht mit meinen neuen historischen Forschungsergebnissen ergänzt.

Im Jahr 1910 gab es in Wien und Niederösterreich, damals zusammen ein Kronland, 929 Personen, die ein Jahreseinkommen von mehr als 100.000 Kronen versteuerten. Sie bezahlten dafür weniger als 5 Prozent an Einkommenssteuer. Eine Person ragt dabei heraus: Albert Frh. v. Rothschild. Er als Einzelperson versteuerte 1910 ein Jahreseinkommen von 25,6 Mio. Kronen. Das ist mehr als sieben Mal so viel wie die nächsten im Ranking. Ein Familienverband ragt unter diesen knapp 1000 „Millionären“ heraus: Insgesamt elf Mitglieder der Familie Wittgenstein sind unter den 929 Spitzenverdienern zu finden, auch wenn sie es zusammen gerechnet nur auf ein Jahreseinkommen von etwa fünf Mio. Kronen brachten, damit zusammen nur knapp ein Fünftel dessen, was Albert Rothschild als Einzelner verdiente. Rothschild war ein Monolith, er stand ganz allein. Die Wittgenstein waren ein Familiennetzwerk mit höchst unterschiedlichen Sozialprofilen: Karl Wittgenstein (1847–1913, im Jahr 1910 1.349.750 Kronen Jahreseinkommen) und seine beiden Brüder Paul (1842–1928, 140.180 Kronen) und Ludwig (1845–1925, 687.055 Kronen), seine Schwestern bzw. deren Ehemänner Klara (1850–1935, 194.040 Kronen), Emilie „Milly“, verh. Brücke (1853–1939, 122.414 Kronen), Hermine Fanny Josephine, verh. Oser (1844–1933, 113.664 Kronen), Lydia, verh. Siebert (1851–1920, 115.038 Kronen) und Bertha, verh. Kupelwieser (1848–1909, 728.902 Kronen), dazu drei bereits selbständig versteuernde Kinder von Karl Wittgenstein: Helene Gabriele, genannt Lenka, verh. Salzer (1879–1956, 315.429 Kronen), Paul (1887–1961/251.522 Kronen), der „einarmige“ Pianist und der Philosoph Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951, 237.308 Kronen). Untersucht werden in dem Aufsatz die höchst unterschiedlichen Sozialprofile, Verhaltensweisen und Schicksale dieser elf Angehörigen der Wittgenstein-Familie und deren Übereinstimmung, aber auch scharfer Kontrast zur Familie Rothschild, bei der sich im Jahr 1910 alles auf eine einzige Person konzentrierte: auf Albert, den im Jahr 1910 nach allgemeiner Meinung und auch nach den statistischen Daten als reichster Mann Europas galt. Die beiden Zentralfiguren der beiden Familien, Karl Wittgenstein, der Vater des berühmten Philosophen, und Albert Rothschild, der mächtige Bankier, waren beide keine Montanisten, nicht einmal Industrielle. Sie waren Kapitalisten, die die bedeutendsten Hüttenkonzerne des Reichs beherrschten und das mächtige Eisenkartell dirigierten. Albert Rothschild war ein, wenn auch wenig gläubiger Jude geblieben, bei den Wittgensteins vereinigten sich in der großen Familie fünf verschiedene Bekenntnisse: jüdisch, katholisch, evangelisch AB, evangelisch HC und zuletzt auch ohne Bekenntnis. Die Rothschilds waren in den Adel aufgestiegen, die Wittgensteins verweigerten aber jeden Adelstitel. Wittgenstein förderte moderne Maler, heimische Architekten und progressive Musiker, die Rothschilds kauften alte Meister, liebten leichte Musik und holten die Architekten aus Frankreich etc.

This first volume of The Collected Works of Rudolf Carnap includes Carnap’s published writings from 1921 when he submitted his dissertation Der Raum (Space) in Jena to Bruno Bauch to 1926 the year he completed his habilitation in Vienna under Moritz Schlick. It thereby documents Carnap’s early writings during his formative years that culminated in his first major publication Der logische Aufbau der Welt (The Logical Structure of the World) which appeared in 1928 and will be included in the second volume. Fourteen volumes are planned in total. In his foreword Richard Creath, the general editor, states that the series will include “all of the books and papers Carnap authorized for publication in his lifetime.” (viii)

Research and publications on Wittgenstein and on the Vienna Circle of Logical Empiricism have been steadily increasing in recent decades. Nevertheless, detailed comparisons between the single famous philosopher and the influential circle around Moritz Schlick are less often undertaken. To be sure, the reception and impact of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus (TLP) on the Vienna Circle is a familiar topic as are the conversations Wittgenstein had with Schlick and Waismann. This introductory essay suggests that a broader focus be adopted. The first part provides an overview of the multi-faceted Vienna Circle based on recent historiography and primary sources; the second part offers a new perspective on the complex relations between Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle. To this end, a case study of a central relevant document is provided, namely of Rose Rand’s “Development of the Theses of the ‘Vienna Circle’” (1932/33). A close reading of this unique source sheds new light on the central philosophical triangle of Wittgenstein-Schlick-Waismann and opens up new avenues for future analyses. These considerations are offered to provide a thematic frame for the papers contained in this volume documenting the international conference on “Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle”, held in Vienna, June 2021 to mark the centenary of the publication of Wittgenstein’s Logisch-philosophische Abhandlung (1921) / Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922).

The life of the philosopher and librarian Amalia Rosenblüth (1892–1979), who was in touch with the Lemberg-Warsaw-School (Lemberg-Warschauer-Schule) and the Vienna Circle (Wiener Kreis), remained in the dark for a long time. The philosopher and sociologist Ilse Korotin took up this desideratum of research. Since 1992 her work has continued to provide new insights into Rosenblüth’s life. Often Korotin’s results of research are presented as lexical contributions, e.g., in books like Wissenschafterinnen in und aus Österreich (ed. by Brigitta Keintzel and Ilse Korotin) or Bibliothekarinnen in und aus Österreich (ed. by Ilse Korotin and Edith Stumpf-Fischer). Now, Korotin provides the first book-length biography of Amalia Rosenblüth.

This edition of the early diaries of Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970), which are housed in the Carnap estate at the University of Pittsburgh, was published in two volumes by Felix Meiner Verlag Hamburg in 2021 and 2022. These are also the first two volumes of the Meiner Edition Schriften aus dem Nachlass von Rudolf Carnap. The title of these two volumes is succinctly Rudolf Carnap. Tagebücher (Rudolf Carnap. Diaries), supplemented by the respective indication of the volume. Volume 1 (approx. 600 pages) comprises the diaries from 1908 to 1919, Volume 2 (approx. 900 pages) those from 1920 to 1935. With these volumes, the diaries of one of the central thinkers of the Vienna Circle and Logical Empiricism become accessible to a wider circle of researchers and interested parties. While the diaries were previously only partially accessible, they have now for the first time been released in their entirety in the form of a proper text-critical edition. The editor is Christian Damböck with the collaboration of Brigitte Arden, Roman Jordan, Brigitte Parakenings and Lois M. Rendl. Text transcriptions of the originals, which Carnap had written in shorthand, served as the basis for the edition. The transcription was done by Brigitte Parakenings and Brigitte Arden, further editing by Lois M. Rendl and Roman Jordan.

The turn of the last century was a key transitional period for the development of symbolic logic and scientific philosophy. The Peano school, the editorial board of the Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, and the members of the Vienna Circle are generally mentioned as champions of this transformation of the role of logic in mathematics and in the sciences. The articles contained in this volume aim to contribute to a richer historical and philosophical understanding of these groups and research areas in Italy, France and Austria. Specifically, the contributions focus on the following topics: a detailed investigation of the relation between structuralism and modern mathematics; different notions of definition and interpretation at the turn of last century; a closer understanding of the relation between the Vienna Circle, the Peano School and French philosophy in the first half of the twentieth century.

This book discusses questions concerning mind and matter, substance and accident, and knowledge and experience in the work of a wide range of nineteenth and early twentieth century philosophers, giving a problem-oriented account of Austrian philosophy and its role in the conception of analytic philosophy and logical empiricism. At the centre of the book is the debate about the relation between empirical science and metaphysics, and the question of whether empirical psychology depends on the metaphysics of the soul - the mental substance. Friedrich Albert Lange’s famous dictum to create a “psychology without a soul” pointed the way.

Two new publications deal with the visual communication of knowledge and the possibility of universally understandable symbolic languages as essential prerequisites for comprehending and participating in social and political transformations in the twentieth century. Both—and this should hardly come as a surprise in this context—present projects that are directly or indirectly, in theory and/or practice connected with the Vienna Circle member Otto Neurath. Thus, after a prolonged examination of Neurath’s Viennese period and the projects at the Österreichisches Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum, interest in Isotype and Otto Neurath’s intellectual development in exile has fortunately increased and led to a revised and enriched perspective on his work. Nevertheless, these two books shed light on contexts and aspects that have received rather limited attention to date. This is not just important for the classification of the development of the Isotype Institute in British exile, but also for the idea of a symbolic language through a former employee of Otto Neurath in Vienna, Rudolf Modley, and his collaborators such as cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead during the war and in the post-war period in the USA. In this respect, both publications might also allow an assessment of the reception and connection of ideas on visual communication in parts of the English-speaking world and their integration into the “visual memory” of the time—at least in a certain environment.

In 1917/18 the German publisher Eugen Diederichs organized three “closed meetings” at Lauenstein castle in Upper Franconia (Germany) where about 60 representatives of science, art, and “the youth” discussed “the meaning and purpose of our time.” (273) The present volume delivers the definitive documentation of these historically important meetings. At the same time, it brings together three different sources, carefully selected, edited, and introduced by Meike Werner.

Edgar Zilsel’s habilitation attempt in 1923/24 has been researched for the last four decades. Most reconstructions attributed its failure mainly to the submitted work “Beiträge zur Geschichte des Geniebegriffes” and its “unphilosophical” character. More recent texts, however, assume that political and anti-Semitic motives might have played an important role in why Zilsel’s university career in Vienna ended before it even could begin. This suspicion is substantiated in this article by quoting from research on anti-Semitic professorial networks at the University of Vienna. After an extended recapitulation of the minutes of Zilsel’s habilitation commission, the political machinations of well-organized secret cliques such as the “Bärenhöhle” are presented. This anti-Semitic network consisted almost exclusively of professors from the humanities and dominated the faculty of philosophy at the University of Vienna from the early 1920s onwards. This hegemony of right-wing professors had its first culmination in 1923/24, just when Zilsel applied for habilitation. These findings not only help to better understand why two specific members of the habilitation commission were against Zilsel’s application. This reconstruction also suggests that his attempt mainly failed because of the anti-Semitic dominance in the Professorenkollegium, the decisive body at the faculty: Zilsel – like many other young Jewish or leftist academics at the University of Vienna already in the 1920s – did not have any chance from the beginning.

In this introduction we want to highlight the variety and complexity of Zilsel’s work, taking, on the one hand, into account his diverse role as a philosopher, historian, sociologist, and political intellectual, without neglecting, on the other, the kind of unity conveyed by his idea of philosophy as a “general theory”: the unity of the realms of man and nature, the transdisciplinary unity of scientific method, the programmatic unity between theory and practice. These forms of unity should not be understood as undifferentiated: as the contributions to this volume show, Zilsel never lost sight of the highly complex, open-ended and uncertain character of reality and scientific inquiry. Also, Zilsel did not conceive of unity as a given fact, but as something still to be realized, which gave his work both its theoretical and practical orientation: Zilsel’s idea of unity arose from his striving to engage with the intricate problems of his time beyond disciplinary boundaries, philosophical or political schools. Finally, we provide an overview of the topics discussed by the authors who contributed to this volume.

In this paper I analyze Edgar Zilsel’s genuinely philosophical critique of the epistemological and ethical claims manifested in the so called “Religion of Genius”. For this purpose, I suggest a rereading of Die Geniereligion (1918) in connection with and in analogy to its philosophical roots and contexts in the historical Enlightenment discourse. I try to point out that Zilsel not only considers the “Religion of Genius” as a rather dubious socio-cultural phenomenon of his time but also as a threat to philosophy itself and to his own logico-empiricist approach, which he earlier developed in the Anwendungsproblem (1916). I demonstrate that going beyond an intentionally destructive critique, Zilsel also uses the concepts of the “Religion of Genius” as a negative foil to present and further elaborate his own logico-empiricist program of rationalization, including his ideal of objectivity and an existential ideal of the “objective craftsmen”.

Edgar Zilsel lived from April 1939 until March 1944 in the United States. During these five years he wrote and published articles which secured him a distinguished place in the field of history and sociology of science – after their rediscovery. This chapter describes and analyzes in detail Zilsel’s American years, his contacts with refugee help organizations, philanthropic foundations and fellow refugee scholars. It is argued that Zilsel lacked a mentor to help him to open the doors of American academia and that his cautious behavior and old-fashioned European personality also contributed to his failure to establish himself abroad.

Hans Kelsen and Edgar Zilsel shared a common interest in how the instruments of human thinking developed. Both scholars took a historical as well as a sociological perspective. Kelsen focused on the difference and the mutual relations between two forms of connecting events: The earlier instrument of Imputation meaning the linking of events by a normative proposition, originally the principle of retribution, and – stemming from this – the instrument of Causality meaning an objective connection of events, closely linked with the idea of Laws of Nature. Zilsel aimed at the emergence of empirical thinking by locating the origins of modern science within closer defined historical situations. The essay reflects on the complementary character of both scholars’ respective attempts with a view on persisting questions like the one about “free will”.

Edgar Zilsel’s genius-study from 1918 (Die Geniereligion) shows his first steps in defining the relationships between a work of art, its creator and the public in causal terms. The concepts that he used for analyzing the sociological phenomenon of genius-veneration are philosophical ones which he adopted from his teacher Heinrich Gomperz: “reflection” and “formalization”. We read Zilsel’s investigation as suggesting that both enthusiasm for the irrational and commitment to objectivity flow from the same sources, namely the sociological conditions of late modernity.

Edgar Zilsel (1891–1944) was a typical outsider for several reasons – as a Jew, socialist, and scholar outside the university aiming at an integrated history, philosophy, and sociology of science from a materialistic point of view. His main publications and research projects in Vienna (on induction and probability, the problem of genius, philosophy in political context) and after his forced migration (on the origins of modern science and the laws of nature and history) are described and analyzed here in their diachronic and synchronic connections and contexts. Even though Zilsel’s projects were left uncompleted for largely external reasons, their underlying continuity and unity can serve as a heuristic tool for interpreting his complex life’s work. Below, a bio-bibliographical sketch of Zilsel from Vienna to the exile years in the USA (with a case study on Zilsel in Harvard 1939) is followed by a survey of research on Zilsel from the 1970s to the present. The conclusion compares Zilsel’s work before, during, and after his Vienna Circle period: despite the criticisms of and extensions to his work (esp. the “Zilsel thesis”), the relevance of his achievements and his unfinished research program stands undiminished.

In this paper, I reconstruct the development and the complex character of Zilsel’s conception of scientific laws. This concept functions as a fil rouge for understanding Zilsel’s philosophy throughout different times (here, the focus is on his Viennese writings and how they pave the way to the more renowned American ones) and across his many fields of work (from physics to politics). A good decade before Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle was going to mark the outbreak of indeterminism in quantum physics, Edgar Zilsel started to develop a complex logical-philosophical theory in which statistical and causal laws were given an indeterministic foundation. However, in developing his thoughts on the emergence of regularities from disorder, Zilsel arrives at a profound ambiguity with respect to the ontological or the epistemic nature of laws and order in the world: Whether this order is to be conceived of as an empirical finding or as the product of reason – this would have to remain unclear. This tension between rationalism and empiricism, as well as a tension between a realist and an anti-realist conception of lawfulness, can be identified in both Zilsel’s Viennese and American writings: a tension which touches the core of the “problem of application” that would keep haunting Zilsel until his premature death.

The pedagogue Friedrich Wilhelm Dörpfeld, Rudolf Carnap’s grandfather, developed an interesting account of the relationship between science, religion, and ethics, which belongs to the tradition of Herbart and can be seen as a typical product of empirically minded philosophy in nineteenth-century Germany. This paper examines Dörpfeld’s philosophical views and compares them with Carnap’s non-cognitivism and his views on religion. It turns out that Carnap’s non-cognitivism can be seen as a secularized version of Dörpfeld’s views, while Carnap’s views on religion are obviously inspired by the enlightened Protestantism of his grandfather. These are the acknowledgements that should be shifted to the beginning of the essay (e.g. as a footnote to the title).

In this paper I shall discuss Hans Hahn’s view on religion. Hahn, very much like other members of the Vienna circle, claims that metaphysical elements such as religious beliefs belong to a different domain than science, namely that of faith. In certain places in his argumentation, it is, however, not clear whether the “scientific world-view” and the “metaphysical world-view” essentially differ, and thus belong to entirely separate domains or whether the scientific world-view is a kind of faith as well, and thus in competition with religious belief. Hahn, being a politically involved socialist, reflects on the metaphysical world-view also in terms of a superstructure based on practical life. Here, he distinguishes between two competing paradigms of thinking: world-affirming and world-denying philosophy. As I will show, Hahn’s reasoning implies an unjustified preference for what he calls “world-affirming” philosophy over “world-denying” religion, ending up in a missionary plea for liberation of humanity from “the nightmare” of world-denying metaphysics.