Marcellin Berthelot vs. Otto Neurath
Side-by-side comparison of two thinkers
Marcellin Berthelot
1827 – 1907
Pierre Eugène Marcellin Berthelot was a French chemist and Republican politician noted for the Thomsen–Berthelot principle of thermochemistry. He synthesized many organic compounds from inorganic substances, providing a large amount of counter-evidence to the theory of Jöns Jakob Berzelius that organic compounds required organisms in their synthesis. Berthelot was convinced that chemical synthesis would revolutionize the food industry by the year 2000, and that synthesized foods would replace farms and pastures.
"If each one of us adds something to the common weal in the domain of science, or art, or morality, the reason is because long series of generations have lived, …"
Otto Neurath
1882 – 1945
Otto Karl Wilhelm Neurath was an Austrian-born philosopher of science, sociologist, and political economist. Considered "one of the neglected geniuses of the twentieth century", Neurath, among other things, invented the ISOTYPE method of pictorial statistics and an innovator in museum practice. Before he fled his native country in 1934, Neurath was one of the leading figures of the Vienna Circle.
"The members of the Vienna Circle are working out a ‘Logical Empiricism’. Following Ernst Mach and Poincaré, but above all Russell and Wittgenstein, all the scie…"
Connections
Both wrote about: