• International Language and the Everyday: Contact and Collaboration Between C.K. Ogden, Rudolf Carnap and Otto Neurath

    Author(s):
    James McElvenny (see profile)
    Date:
    2013
    Group(s):
    Analytic Philosophy, History of Linguistics and Language Study, Linguistics
    Subject(s):
    Analysis (Philosophy), Philosophy, History, Idea (Philosophy)
    Item Type:
    Article
    Tag(s):
    Carnap, Ogden, Neurath, Isotype, diagrams, Vienna Circle, Analytical philosophy, History of philosophy, History of ideas
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M61Z50
    Abstract:
    Although now largely forgotten, the international language movement was, from the 1880s to the end of the Second World War, a matter of widespread public interest, as well as a concern of numerous scientists and scholars. The primary goal was to establish a language for international communication, but in the early twentieth century an increasing accent was placed on philosophical considerations: wanted was a language better suited to the needs of modern science and rational thought. In this paper, we examine the example of the English scholar C.K. Ogden’s international language Basic English and his efforts to win the Vienna Circle philosophers Otto Neurath and Rudolf Carnap over to the project. Basic is shown to be an implementation of key ideas in Ogden’s philosophy of language, ideas shared to a large extent with Neurath and Carnap. This we see through an examination of their unpublished correspondence, as well as through the collaboration that emerged between Ogden and Neurath, in which Neurath’s Isotype, a system for graphically representing statistical data, became closely aligned with Basic. Through the ideas and endeavours we investigate here, we gain a new perspective on this crucial period in the history of analytic philosophy.
    Metadata:
    xml
    Published as:
    Journal article     Show details
    Pub. DOI:
    https://doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2013.825761
    Publisher:
    Informa UK Limited
    Pub. Date:
    2013-10-23
    Journal:
    British Journal for the History of Philosophy
    Volume:
    21
    Issue:
    6
    Page Range:
    1194 - 1218
    ISSN:
    0960-8788,1469-3526
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    5 years ago
    License:
    All Rights Reserved
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