The Complex Role of Karl Menger in the Viennese Economic Theory

This paper is focused on the relation between economics and mathematics in the Wiener Kreis and in the Mathematische Kolloquium. In the 1930s the economic theory became a part of Otto Neurath’s project of Unified Science, but in Menger’s Kolloquium the reformulation of the model of general economic equilibrium (GEE) distanced it greatly from the Kreis’s neopositivist point of view. The role of Karl Menger is fundamental to understand the methodological and epistemological cleavage that arose in Mathematische Kolloquium. His role was very important also for understand the relation between the economic theory of the Austrian school and mathematical economics.