International Picture Language. The first rules of Isotype

London: Basic English Publishing. n.d..

Second issue published by Basic English Publishing and with the original price of 2/6 overstamped with 3/6. Number 83 in the Psyche Miniatures General Series. 150x100mm. pp. 117, [2]. With the folding table of "Basic English" bound before the title page. Original red cloth backed boards. Printed paper label to spine. Slight scuffing to spine and some marking and soiling to covers. Browning to half title but otherwise in excellent condition throughout. A very good copy of the undated reissue published by C.K.Ogden's Basic English Publishing. In every respect (save the imprint and the price) this is the same as the Kegan Paul 1936 edition. The distinctive graphics were designed by Gerd Arntz whose work Neurath had seen in an exhibition and immediately recognised as suitable for his new 'language'.
Neurath was a philosopher-polymath whose range of intellectual interests was formidable. The invention of Isotype (an acronym of International System of Typographic Picture Education) is perhaps his most accessible achievement. It was developed as a method of representing social-scientific data and of "transforming" complex, detailed statistical information into pictures and diagrams that transcend language. Although it had some of the characteristics of language, it was intended to work alongside traditional language, not replace it. Neurath wrote in German but he also used, in some of his work, including this book, C.K.Ogden's Basic English. Isotype emerged from the world of linguistic radicalism which preoccupied so many of the Vienna Circle, including most notably Wittgenstein with whom Ogden worked so closely on the Tractatus. Isotype, despite its apparent simplicity and its aim of transcending written language, was, in fact, a highly sophisticated investigation of what language could do.