The Vienna Circle Contra Mundum
The Viennese mathematician Karl Sigmund undertakes the ambitious project of writing about the illustrious Vienna Circle in his group biography Exact Thinking in Demented Times. Composed of thinkers like Rudolf Carnap, Otto Neurath, and Kurt Gödel and inspired by the writings of Albert Einstein, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Bertrand Russell, the Vienna Circle left a lasting mark on how we think about science. Its theme songs were the scientific worldview and exact thinking, ideas that in the Europe of the 1920s and 30s were provocative and, ultimately, dangerous. Since then, the ideas of the circle have been developed but also repeatedly challenged. The story of the Vienna Circle is, however, not merely of historical interest. From the foundations of rational thinking to the demarcation between science and non-science, the issues that these men (and some women) hotly debated almost a hundred years ago are as topical now as they were then.
Philosophy is rarely just about philosophy, science rarely just about science. The book does an excellent job showing how the Circle’s philosophy sprung from interwar Vienna’s cultural Zeitgeist. It shows how the scientific worldview aligned with the cultural and political struggles of Viennese socialism against the growing threat of right-wing authoritarianism in Austria. Sigmund knows his city and its history. He paints a vivid picture of the city’s vibrant cultural and intellectual life: a city renegotiating its identity after losing its status as the capital of a great empire, where bold new ideas were debated in coffeehouses and avant-garde artists were trying to define modernity. Mathematics and the philosophy of science were not only discussed at the University of Vienna but also thematized in novels such as Robert Musil’s modernist masterpiece The Man Without Qualities.
Vienna Circle members (left to right) Moritz Schlick, Otto Neurath and Hans Hahn.
Credits: Schlick: Granger Historical Picture Archive/Alamy; Neurath: Paul Fearn/Alamy; Hahn: Vienna Univ. Archive.
The title of the book, Exact Thinking in Demented Times, points to an important, albeit implicit, theme in the book: the stark contrast between the precise, scientific philosophy of the Vienna Circle and its turbulent political and social surroundings. Vienna is not only a backdrop but an integral part of the story of the Circle. The very name “Vienna Circle” was suggested by Neurath because it evoked positive associations such as the Vienna Woods or Viennese Waltz. Sigmund’s portrayal of the city’s intellectual and artistic bloom makes Vienna’s descent into Nazi barbarism even more tragic. The title of the German original is, fittingly, Exaktes Denken am Rand des Untergangs—“exact thinking at the brink of a downfall.”
The book is both informative and entertaining. The first chapters trace the roots of the Vienna Circle to Ernst Mach and Ludwig Boltzmann, the famous physicist-philosophers of the pre-war generation. The true protagonists, though, are the next generation of philosophers, mathematicians, and physicists. They gathered around Moritz Schlick, himself a philosopher, physicist, and the Circle’s chair and founder, for weekly discussions. The core message of the Vienna Circle was the need for “a scientific worldview.” Presented in their 1929 manifesto, they sought to create a purely science-based philosophy, without metaphysics or linguistic obscurantism. For them, science was without mysteries; everything there is can be surveyed and explained in its totality and verified empirically. Everything that means anything can be expressed clearly. Beyond this general attitude, the members of the Vienna Circle did not have a unified philosophy and didn't agree with each other on everything. Their thinking was as varied as their backgrounds and personalities. In today’s world of experts, this makes their fruitful philosophical cooperation especially noteworthy.
Sigmund presents the core ideas of each of these thinkers concisely and clearly but does not dwell too much on philosophical or scientific minutiae. Instead, he is interested in the colorful life-stories of the people behind the ideas. Be it Carnap’s “collective eroticism,” Neurath’s dramatic escape from the Nazis in an over-crowded boat, or Gödel’s death by self-starvation, the book is filled with interesting and tragic anecdotes. Sigmund references the lives and ideas of great minds that interacted with the Circle, such as Karl Popper, Albert Einstein, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Also included are lengthy chapters about the “parallel circles” like the Vienna Mathematical Colloquium and the Austrian School of Economics. Being a mathematician himself, the author goes into considerable detail regarding the work of the Viennese mathematicians. To the uninitiated, these are some of the more challenging parts to get through.
Fitting with the book’s overall theme, Sigmund emphasizes the political dimensions of the Circle’s scientific ethos. The left-wingers of the Vienna Circle—Hans Hahn, Carnap, and Neurath, most notably—also understood the scientific worldview as a political vocation. They were enthusiastic supporters of the political and social aspirations of the “Red Vienna,” the nickname for the period under the Social Democrats from 1918 to 1934 when several successful social reforms were introduced. An example of this union of science and politics was Neurath’s Museum for Social and Economic Affairs, which was not so much a traditional museum as it was an educational establishment where social facts were presented to the public. For Neurath, statistics was the key to understanding society and had to be immediately accessible to every man and woman. To achieve this, he initiated the creation of a new pictorial language, which was designed to convey the complexities of social and economic situations to the masses. Democratizing science by making knowledge easily available and understandable was especially important for Neurath’s socialist ideals.
Despite the successful social reforms in interwar Vienna, ideologically motivated violence was rampant on both the political left and right. The author showcases the Circle’s mostly disinterested (despite its leftist tendencies) pursuit of scientific progress in contrast to accelerating polarization in the country. On the national level, the nationalist Engelbert Dollfuss seized power in 1932, shortly afterwards turning Austria into a one-party state. He envisioned Austria as a Catholic, independent corporate state under powerful authoritarian leadership. His Austrofascism was virtually the opposite of everything the Vienna Circle stood for. Additionally, many of the circles most prominent members were Jewish. Unlike the German National Socialist Party, Austrofascism did not officially embrace racist doctrines. However, virulent anti-Semitism was widespread everywhere in the country, and the University of Vienna was not an exception.
Inscription to remind on the Philosophenstiege (philosophers’ staircase) of the University of Vienna.
In reads: “On 22 June 1936 Moritz Schlick, a leading member of
the Vienna Circle, was murdered on this spot. An intellectual climate
poisoned by racism and intolerance contributed to the act.”
All of this culminated in Moritz Schlick’s murder in 1936. A deranged, former student shot him on a University staircase. The press soon found sympathy for the culprit. Even though Schlick had been a German Protestant, the coverage of the murder was muddled in anti-Semitic undertones. As the leader of the circle and a proponent of positivism, which had became a code-word for anti-Austrian and anti-Christian sentiments generally, he was seen as guilty by association. It was even suggested that Schlick’s “nihilistic” philosophy was to blame for his murder. Soon, the Vienna Circle stood accused of having carried out much of its activity “to the detriment of Austria’s reputation as a Christian state.” Indeed, philosophy is rarely only about philosophy.
Austrofascism fell in 1938 and Austria was annexed to Nazi-Germany. By this point, there was not much left of the Circle. When Hitler marched into the city, most members of the group were already dispersed around the globe. Many of its members had left for the United States and the United Kingdom, where their ideas were well received. Rudolf Carnap “found the ideal soil for his brand of philosophy” in America, becoming the official voice of logical empiricism. Kurt Gödel ended up in Princeton, there developing ideas that inspired Alan Turing and informed the development of computer science. Neurath and his wife Marie Neurath were in Oxford developing their pictorial language, which came to be known as Isotype (International System of Typographic Picture Education). This invention has had a surprisingly lasting influence on our daily lives: most traffic signs are either Isotype designs or designs strongly influenced by it.
Exact Thinking in Demented Times is an enjoyable and informative homage to this exceptional group of people and their collective efforts to define the scientific worldview. One need not agree with the Vienna Circle’s philosophical ideas to recognize their lasting significance both at university departments and on the broader culture. Furthermore, Sigmund’s enthralling narrative about the Circle’s pursuit of exact thinking against the backdrop of the rising extremism, economic disasters, and Nazi irrationality in interwar Europe is a reminder that scientific inquiry does not exist in a vacuum. As the Vienna Circle declared in their manifesto: ”the scientific worldview serves life, and life embraces it.”