Otto Neurath and Adult Education: Unity of Science, Materialism and Comprehensive Enlightenment

Abstract

In the 1920’s and the early 1930’s there existed in Vienna a group of scientists from both within and outside of the University who sought to establish a connection between science, education and working life, between scientific investigations and their meaning for the everyday life of the wider population. Important representatives of the Vienna Circle—members of this discussion group around Moritz Schlick as well as the Verein Ernst Mach (e.g. Rudolf Carnap, Hans Hahn, Otto Neurath, Friedrich Waismann, Edgar Zilsel, and, independently, Ludwig Wittgenstein)—were concerned as much with the reform of scientific and philosophical activity as with school reform, work in adult education and the related reform of social life in genera.¹

... because we cannot achieve anything, nor even talk about anything properly, if we have not learnt a proper understanding of that which is to be done or talked about. There is nothing in the mind, however, which has not been previously in the senses. Since the visible world does not possess anything which could not be seen, heard, smelled, tasted or touched, so that from this we can decide what and of what kind it is, it follows that the world does not contain anything which a human being endowed with sensuality and reason could not comprehend. If it is possible to start a light of comprehensive wisdom, it will spread its rays across the whole field of human spirit, waken contentedness in the hearts of men, and change their minds. For if they see their own destiny and the world clearly in this light and learn to apply the means which unfailingly lead to good goals, why should they not make use of them? Jan Amos Comenius

First published as ‘Otto Neurath und die Volksbildung — Einheit der Wissenschaft, Materialismus und umfassende Aufklärung’, in Arbeiterbildung in der Zwischenkriegszeit, Hrsg. F. Stadler, © 1982 Österreichisches Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum, Wien, pp. 149–156. Translated with kind permission of Österreichisches Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum and the author by T. E. Uebel