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OTTO NEURATH AND THE LINGUISTIC TURN IN ECONOMICS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 August 2016

Michael Turk
Michael Turk*
Affiliation:
Economics, History, and Political Science, Fitchburg State University, Massachusetts.
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Abstract

In the history of economic thought Otto Neurath, who is known foremost for spearheading the development of the Vienna Circle of philosophers, has served largely as a foil for his advocacy of in-kind calculation and economic planning. Yet Neurath, who was trained as an economist and wrote extensively about economics, including its philosophical foundations, held an abiding interest in the use of language in science, and was strongly influenced by turn-of-the-twentieth-century conventionalists, among them Henri Poincaré and Pierre Duhem. Consequently, Neurath’s critique of what he saw as the conceptual flaws of economics and its too narrow framework as price theory was rooted as much in its imprecise and ‘unsorted’ use of language as in his critical view of capitalism. As such, he anticipated the ‘linguistic turn’ in economics that gained prominence only a half-century later, without any recognition of his presaging role.

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Articles
Information
Journal of the History of Economic Thought , Volume 38 , Issue 3 , September 2016 , pp. 371 - 389
Copyright
Copyright © The History of Economics Society 2016 

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