Abstract
Firstly, I will share with you significant Nachlass discoveries that I have made over the past few years which reconstruct an early version of the Philosophical Investigations (Philosophische Untersuchungen). It is the version for which the Wittgenstein scholarly community has been searching as the missing text promised to the Cambridge University Press in 1938 with the projected title Philosophische Bemerkungen, and for which the translation that Rhees and Wittgenstein worked on together was made. It is relevant as it is crucially important for us as we consider Wittgenstein as a philosopher of mathematics and physics because this early version spans the well-known TS 220 which constitutes the first part of the published Philosophical Investigations, Remarks 1-189 and the mathematical section of TS 221, which was later published as the first section of Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics.
I have written elsewhere about similarities between aspects of Wittgenstein and Einstein. In this paper I will explore some of their differences.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Baker, G.P & Hacker, P.M.S. 2005: Wittgenstein. Understanding and Meaning: Volume 1 of an Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations, Part II, 2nd Edition, Oxford: Blackwell.
Edwards-McKie, S. 2012: Some remarks arising from Hacking’s ‘Leibniz and Descartes: Proof and Eternal Truths’, Contributions to the 34th Wittgenstein Symposium, Kirchberg, Austria.
Edwards-McKie, S. 2014a: Looking through a microscope. Philosophische Bemerkungen 1938: the hidden revision which fits the 1938 Vorwort, the Rhees translation and what this tells us about Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mathematics and cosmology”, Contributions to the 36th Wittgenstein Symposium, Kircherg, Austria.
Edwards-McKie, S. 2014b Wittgenstein’s Solution to Einstein’s Problem: Calibration across systems, an inaugural lecture HAPP, University of Oxford. Available St Cross College, Oxford website and WAB, University of Bergen website.
Edwards-McKie, S. 2015a: Quantum Decision Theory Revisited; paper presented Austrian National Defence Academy, Vienna; forthcoming 2019.
Edwards-McKie, S. 2015b: The Cosmic Fragment: Härte des Logischen Zwangs and Unendliche Möglichkeit. Nachlass discoveries and Wittgenstein’s conception of generality and the infinite, Wittgenstein Studien, Band 6, 51–81.
Edwards-McKie, S. 2017: Wittgenstein’s Wager: Mathematics, Culture and Human Action, in: Wittgenstein, Philosopher of Cultures, ed. Carl Humphries & Walter Schweidler. Sank Augustin, Germany: Academia Verlag; paper presented symposium Wittgenstein Philosopher of Cultures, Krakow, Poland.
Edwards-McKie, S. 2018: On Infinity: in-potentia, in Philosophy of Logic and Mathematics, eds. Gabriele M. Mras, Paul Weingartner & Bernhard Ritter, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter (forthcoming).
Einstein A, Podolsky B, Rosen N., 1935: Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete?, Physics. Review 47(10): 777–780.
Einstein A, Podolsky B, Rosen N., 1998: Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, eds. Robert Schulmann, A.J. Kox, Michael Janssen and Jozsef Illy, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, Vol. 8.
McGuinness, B., 2002: Manuscripts and works of the 1930s, in: Approaches to Wittgenstein, London, New York: Routledge, 270–286; first published 2001, in: Proceedings of the Logopesole Workshop October 2000, ed. Pasquale Frascolla, Annali della Facolta di Lettere e Filosofia dell Universita della Basilicata, Potenza.
Munz, Volker A., 2010 : The Whewell Court Lectures: A Sketch of a Project, in: Wittgenstein after his Nachlass, ed. Nuno Venturinha, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Nedo, Michael, 1993: Wiener Ausgabe Einführung , Wien, New York: Springer-Verlag.
Pichler, Alois, 2004: Wittgensteins Philosophische Untersuchungen: Vom Buch Zum Albumn, Amsterdam and New York: Brill/Editions Rodopi.
Schlick, Moritz, 1920: Space and Time in Contemporary Physics: An introduction to The Theory of Relativity and Gravitation, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Shanker, Stuart, 1987: Wittgenstein versus Turing on the Nature of Church’s Thesis, Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, 28(4), 615–419.
Turing, Alan, 1936: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society (Series 2), 42, 230–265.
Von Neumann, J., 1930: The Formalist Foundations of Mathematics, in: Philosophy of Mathematics. Selected Readings, eds. R. Benacerraf & H. Putman 1964, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 50–54.
Waismann, Friedrich, 1979: Totality and System, in: Ludwig Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, ed. Brian McGuinness, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1993: Cause and Effect: Intuitive Awareness, in: Philosophical Occasions: 1912–1951, eds. J. Klagge and A. Nordmann, Indianapolis: Hackett, 368-426. See also: Taylor’s Notes: Lectures on Knowledge, Lecture 5, 24-25, cited in Klagge & Nordmann.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, The Wittgenstein Papers, Trinity College, Cambridge, Great Britain.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1997: Ludwig Wittgenstein. Denkbewegungen. Tagebuecher 1930–1932/1936-1937, ed. Ilse Sommavilla, Innsbruck: Hayman.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1974: Philosophical Grammar, ed. Rush Rhees, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1975: Philosophical Remarks, ed. Rush Rhees, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 2001: Philosophishe Untersuchungen. Kritisch-genetische Edition, ed. Joachim Schulte, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1956: Remarks on the Foundation of Mathematics, eds. G.H. von Wright, Rush Rhees & Elizabeth Anscombe, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1986: The Nature of Mathematics. Wittgenstein’s Standpoint, in: Ludwig Wittgenstein: Critical Assessments, Volume Three, ed. Stuart Shanker, London, Sydney and Dover, NH: Croom Helm.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 2017: Wittgenstein’s Whewell’s Court Lectures: Cambridge, 1938–1941, eds. Volker A. Munz & Bernhard Ritter, Oxford: Wiley Blackwell; from the notes taken by Yorick Smythies.
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge for their kind permission to reproduce images from the Wittgenstein collection. This paper was written as a companion paper to three others: “Wittgenstein’s Wager: mathematics, culture and human action”, lecture and publication on decision models in our construction of cultures, with considerations on justice and public policy, Krakow, Poland, 2014, 2017; “Wittgenstein’s Wager: Quantum Decision Theory Revisited”, invited contribution on decision modelling for high risk systems, based on Wittgensteinian philosophy of science and mathematics, Austrian Defence Academy, Vienna, 2015; “On Infinity: in-potentia”, invited paper International Wittgenstein Symposium “Philosophy of Logic and Mathematics”, Kirchberg, Austria, 2018.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Edwards-Mckie, S. (2020). Wittgenstein’s Solution to Einstein’s Problem: Calibration Across Systems. In: Wuppuluri, S., da Costa, N. (eds) WITTGENSTEINIAN (adj.). The Frontiers Collection. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27569-3_19
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27569-3_19
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-27568-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-27569-3
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)