Vienna Circle Exhibition

As part of the 650-year celebration of the University of Vienna, the Institute Vienna Circle is putting on an exhibition on the Vienna Circle. The exhibition opens tomorrow.

A central part of our exhibition will be devoted to the history of the racist and political persecution of intellectuals and scholars, leading to the exodus of the Vienna Circle and the brutal suppression of Vienna’s ‘Golden Autumn’. Many of the central topics of the Vienna Circle are still with us. There is  a direct line leading from the abstract investigations of Carnap and Gödel on symbolic logic to programmed computers and the algorithms governing our life today. The ‘Vienna pictorial statistics’ of Neurath led to the pictograms that  continue to direct  streams of passengers all over the world. The Circle also had close contacts with eminent writers and architects. There was  a tight connection with quantum physics and with Albert Einstein (Schlick was Einstein’s prophet and ‘Hausphilosoph’, and Gödel became Einstein’s best friend). … The exhibition will deal with the extraordinary intellectual and cultural feats that led to the emergence of the Vienna Circle. At the same time, it will also take a closer look at the terrible ravages of political fanaticism and anti-semitism, and the ruthless destruction of a pinnacle of exact thinking.  Last not least, the exhibition will  reveal the international impact that the Vienna Circle would have.

You may not be able to attend the exhibition itself, but there will be a catalog, and Fritz Stadler’s The Vienna Circle is out soon in a 2nd edition.

Karl Sigmund, Sie nannten sich Der Wiener Kreis: Exaktes Denken am Rand des Untergangs. Springer

Christoph Limbeck-Lilienau, Friedrich Stadler, The Vienna Circle: Texts and Pictures at an Exhibition. LIT Verlag

Friedrich Stadler, The Vienna Circle: Studies in the Origins, Development, and Influence of Logical Empiricism. 2nd ed. Springer

(Related: Gödel’s Vienna)

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