Otto Neurath's Isotype and C. K. Ogden's Basic English

摘要

Isotype is a system of diagrammatic representation originally designed in the 1920s for conveying statistical information to visitors of the Vienna Museum of Society and Economy. The system was conceived by the museum's director, the Vienna Circle philosopher Otto Neurath (1882-1945), who saw it as an implementation of aspects of his philosophy of language and semiotic theory. In the 1930s Neurath came into contact with the English scholar C. K. Ogden (1889-1957), co-author with I. A. Richards (1893-1979) of The Meaning of Meaning [1], a classic text in semiotics, and inventor of the international language project Basic English. In the contact and resulting collaboration between Neurath and Ogden there is a clear convergence in their views. This abstract reports on recent research into Neurath, Ogden and their milieu, published principally in McElvenny [2] and McElvenny [3].