ABSTRACT
Among the German nationalist liberals, unity oscillated easily and often from politics to scientific culture to philosophy. Wien began arguing at that moment that the unification of all things scientific was to be predicated not in terms of mechanics, but even mechanics itself was to be accounted for in terms of the underlying theory of electricity and magnetism. One of the responses to slaughter by machine-gun and gas was a drive to create a new society, or, more specifically, to harness the mechano-rational to a new, more rational, more scientific way of living. Neurath likened scientific unification not so much to obedient subjects of a divine law, but rather to the harmonious combined playing of the various instruments of an orchestra. Unity was at once political in its anti-fascist pronouncements and in the practices that made up everyday scientific life.
