Otto Neurath, an Austrian sociologist and philosopher, was one of the originators of logical empiricism and an independent Marxist socialist. A man of great vitality, intelligence, and good humor, Neurath was a polymath and an energetic organizer of academic, educational, and economic affairs. His major work was in sociology, economic and social planning, scientific method, and visual education, this last especially by means of an international language of simplified pictures ("isotypes"), but he was also interested in the history of science, political and moral theory, economic history, and statistical theory and was engaged in recurrent efforts to create a new encyclopedism.

Economic and Comparative History

Neurath's first article, published in 1904, was "Geldzins im Altertum" (Commercial interest in antiquity), and in 1909 he published a popular history of the economic systems of classical Greece and Rome, Antike Wirtschaftsgeschichte (Leipzig, 1909), which he supplemented by shorter studies of...