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| Otto Neurath. (Vienna,1882 - Oxford,1945) |
The answer is simple: There are no suitable words to explain the world...and new ways of understanding are needed... And all possible ways of understanding lead us to a holistic comprehensive view of humanity that involve visual communication and designers.
Facts are overwhelming but: Why is not happening yet?, What impediments do designers need to overcome to be taken seriously?
While reading Otto Neurath's "From Hieroglyphics to Isotype" (1943-45), I came to this quite simple yet visionary explanation:
"What are the origins of the critical and obstructive attitude shown by some people as soon as the question of pictures arises and especially if pictures are systematically used to covey information?
In the middle ages, from which our civilization has inherited so much, those who were literate were particularly word-minded while the lives of the illiterate masses are circumscribed by impressive buildings, sculptures and paintings. As literacy spread and became general and environment grew up in which there was a rather puritanical attitude towards pictures. British parliamentary papers very rarely contained pictorial material. Neither orator nor journalists, both men of words serving topical purposes, nor even writers of more permanent literature in prose or verse were in the habit of using illustrations, although these were sometimes added afterwards by other people. Perhaps it is this tendency which has led to lack of appreciation of informative pictures and to a feeling that any kind of verbal communication must, of necessity, be of higher order than communication by pictures.[...] I think that the day of "eye-consciousness" is rapidly approaching. Communication of knowledge through pictures will play an increasingly large part in the future."
In other words:
This is a world ruled by exclusively word-minded leaders...turning into hollistic-minded by necessity.
Have to give in...
Otto Neurath was an Austrian philosopher of science, sociologist, and political economist. Before he was to flee his native country in 1934, Neurath was one of the leading figures of the Vienna Circle. During the 1920s, Neurath also became an ardent logical positivist and championed 'the scientific attitude'.
