The emergence of multicultural society confronts us with the necessity of devising ways of orchestrating different cultures. Science, whose discoveries impinge on our lives and permit the functioning of societal machinery, could represent a shared framework, if its impact were not confined to material aspects and did not leave untouched the “matters of supreme significance to man”, in Dewey’s (1948) words. Bearing in mind this complex constellation, in my presentation I will deal with Otto Neurath’s proposal of a visual education for a cosmopolitan society. Neurath was one of the most pugnacious advocates of Logical Positivism. What I will concentrate on is the connection he establishes between

a) promotion of democracy as the most advanced form of human life in common, respectful of the plurality of ways of life;

b) science as the possible shared ground permitting social communication and fostering that habit “of arguing which human beings of all nations […] have in common” [NEURATH 1945/1996, p. 251];

c) visual education.

Science, to the extent that it is international folklore, different from the local folklore (the various cultures of which a society is composed), is to Neurath what provides that shared factual knowledge, crucial for the constitution of a community, of a unity-out-of-a-plurality. Furthemore, scientific attitude is closely linked with democratic freedom insofar as its principle is “[t]he transfer of looking at more than one possibility, to be prepared to alter statements”, to which corresponds the democratic pattern, “the social pattern which permits more than one opinions etc.” (260). 

Visual education, to the extent that it “can be more neutral than verbal education” (253) is the educational strategy which is recommended for conveying the factual knowledge indispensable for the very existence of a democracy as variety-within-unity. Moreover, it is the most up-to-date strategy because it comes to terms with the Modern Age of Eye (Neurath), without giving up the meditative mood and habits of arguing as goals of education, and takes into account the transition to an ever-increasing role of the visual in the process of the education of young generations [SIMONE 2000].

In my paper I will focus on the following questions:

1.      which kind of relationship is that obtaining between the multifarious forms of local folklore and science as international folklore, which provides a meeting ground on which all cultures can converge?

2.      in what sense is the relationship possible exclusively to the extent that science is meant as folklore? This question is articulated in three sub-questions: what does Neurath mean by folklore? Which are the features of scientific discourse which, on the one hand, can be shared by all and, on the other, are not in danger of dooming the cultural plurality to ‘homogeneization’? What does educating to science mean? (While in point 1. the stress is on the international nature of science, here it is on its being folklore).

3.      how is this political-educational perspective on science linked with a radically pluralistic epistemological approach?

4.      finally, which is the role played by visual education?

DEWEY, JOHN (1948), Reconstruction as seen Twenty-Five Years Later, Introduction to the 2nd edition of Reconstruction in Philosophy in The Later Works 1925-1953, edited by J.A. Boydston (Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press, 1982, vol. 12, pp. 256-277). NEURATH, OTTO (1937), Unified Science and its Encyclopaedia, Philosophy of Science, 4, 2, pp. 265-277. NEURATH, OTTO (1939), Modern Man in the Making (New York, Alfred A. Knof). NEURATH, OTTO (1941), Universal Jargon and Terminology, in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series, 41, pp. 127-148. NEURATH, OTTO (1944), Foundations of the Social Sciences (Chicago and London, The University of Chicago Press, 1970). NEURATH, OTTO (1945), Visual Education. Humanisation versus Popularisation, in E. Nemeth & Fr. Stadler (eds.), Encyclopedia and Utopia. The Life and Work of Otto Neurath (1882-1945) (Dordrecht-Boston-London, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996, pp. 245-335). OLIVERIO, STEFANO (2006), Pedagogia e visual education. La Vienna di Otto Neurath (Milano, Unicopli). SIMONE, RAFFAELE (2000), La terza fase. Forme di sapere che stiamo perdendo (Roma-Bari, Laterza).