Abstract
Austria and Hungary both cultivated philosophical traditions oriented toward analytical, social, and scientific concepts: the Galilei and the Sunday Circles in Budapest, and the Vienna Circle. These informal institutions and their discussions produced mathematicians, philosophers, sociologists, and art theorists whose ideas were influential well into the 1960s, went far beyond Europe, and have direct relevance to the present time. György Lukács, Karl Mannheim, Károly and Mihaly Polányi, György Pólya, and Béla Balto are some who have felt this influence, as well as Ludwig Wittgenstein, Kurt Gödel, Rudolf Carnap, Otto Neurath, Karl Popper, and Ernst H. Gombrich — just to name the most well known. There were also those less well known, such as Leo Popper, who had propagated the term "open art works' as early as 1906, and the precursor of systems theory, Béla Zaiai. In particular, the influence of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Ernst Mach can scarcely be overestimated. John Blackmore demonstrates the effect that Mach had on Hungarian scientists (Tódor von Kármán, György von Bekesy, Gyorgy von Hevesy, John von Neumann, Jenö Pál Wigner, Leo Szilárd, and Ede Teller). E. Leinfellner convincingly shows, however, that Fritz Mauthner influenced Wittgenstein. C.J. Nyiri analyzes the specificities of Hungarian and Austrian philo-sophy from the perspective of the humanities.