 Not yet dismissed as pseudoscience, race science flourished, overtaking medicine and public health, even in America, with excesses of negative eugenics.In the 1920s, some philosophers and scientists were appalled by the flaring nationalism, racism, and bigotry, yet perhaps no less by the countermovements toward metaphysics, intuitionism, and mysticism.Also optimistic, some of the appalled German and Austrian intellectuals were inspired by breakthroughs in philosophy, mathematics, logic, and physics, and sought to lend humankind a transparent, universal language competent to vet statements for either logical truth or empirical truth, no more confusion and irrationality.