Wittgenstein

Eduardo Simões

doi:10.24117/2526-2270.2020.i8.08

Abstract

 The purpose of this article is to fill an interpretive gap in L. Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus in what has been overlooked by most scholars of the Austrian philosopher. It is the consideration of the possible influences that he would have suffered from the time of Mechanical Engineering studies and that reflected directly in his philosophy, especially those arising from the field of Physics. Due to the extensive restrictions that involve a scientific article, it will not be possible to present here what we believe to be the influences of L. Boltzmann’s thought on the Wittgenstein Tractatus – which will remain for future work. However, we present the influences of H. Hertz’s The Principles of Mechanics on at least three fundamental themes of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus: on the ontological formalism of Tractarian objects, on the picture theory of language and on the conception of science of that work. It is expected that such clarifications will serve a new and important understanding of this seminal work of the 20th century, this time from the perspective of the relationship between Philosophy and Physics in Wittgenstein.

Highlights

It is not known exactly what is the real contribution of understanding a thinker’s contextual biography to the understanding of the development of his own thought
Wittgenstein: Physics and Philosophy Eduardo Simões became interested in Logic and Mathematics out of a personal interest in the philosophical foundation of Natural Science – he became interested in the Philosophy of Science
It was through these works, whose access was given during his studies in Mechanical Engineering, that Wittgenstein provided us with one of the most comprehensive and thought-provoking philosophical works of the 20th century, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Summary

Introduction

It is not known exactly what is the real contribution of understanding a thinker’s contextual biography to the understanding of the development of his own thought. Wittgenstein, with the concept of object as the ultimate element of reality, just as the material particle in Hertz is the ultimate element of the system, uses mechanics as an attempt to construct all the propositions we need for the description of the world according to a plan (Notebooks, 12/06/1914).

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