Wittgenstein, Ludwig

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Engineer, architect, and one of the most influential analytic and linguistic philosophers of the twentieth century, Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) was born in Vienna, Austria, on April 26 and died a few days after his sixty-second birthday in Cambridge, England, on April 29. Although seldom emphasized in works about the philosopher, Wittgenstein's life was deeply engaged with technology. He studied mechanical engineering in Berlin and aeronautical engineering in Manchester, England, securing the patent for a propeller in 1911. He also conducted combustion chamber research and his ideas were used for helicopter engines after World War II. Even after abandoning his engineering career, Wittgenstein's engineering education continued to exercise an influence on his philosophical work.

Wittgenstein began his career as a philosopher in 1912 after reading Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead's Principia Mathematica (Volume I, 1910). The logical foundations of mathematics was one of the most important philosophical issues of the day, and between 1914 and 1918 Wittgenstein wrote one of his Tractatus Logico Philosophicus. Its spare hundred pages contain a philosophy of logic, of language and meaning, of science, an ontology, and by implication, ethics. Language is the basis for all thought, so that the first philosophical task must be to understand its relation to the world in order to clarify its meaning. Many philosophical problems rest on confusions about the meaning of language; when these confusions are revealed, the problems vanish. Only scientific problems are real and thus able to be truly solved.

Wittgenstein's work was a fundamental influence on the philosophical program of the logical empiricists of the Vienna Circle, including Otto Neurath (1882–1945), Moritz Schlick (1882–1936), and Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970). This program argued that metaphysics,ethics, and religious beliefs were non-scientific and therefore beyond serious philosophical enquiry. Ethical values themselves were sometimes presented as no more than expressions of personal or social emotions. This positivist interpretation of Wittgenstein's thought remained influential even into the 1980s. In the Tractatus itself, however, Wittgenstein maintained that although only scientific problems are real, what really matters for human beings are unsolvable questions about right and wrong, good and bad, the meaning of life and so on (Wittgenstein classified these as mystical questions). To be unable to give acceptable scientific answers to such questions did not imply their meaninglessness.

After his death the publication of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations revealed a very different Wittgenstein than that associated with the Tractatus. To some extent, Wittgenstein turned away from a logical, scientific clarification of language, because diversity of language uses demonstrates the futility of the effort. Language does not function as a scientific mirror of the world but as a profound social phenomenon, as a practice among people. The meanings of words are found in their uses in different contexts, as they are used in language games, which belong to specific ways of life or forms of life, and mistakes arise when philosophers try to find essential meanings in words, because such meanings do not exist. Language is also a learned technique, and to some extent all techniques, even scientific ones, are similar: They all have a deeply social element. There is no super-game of philosophy or science that could subsume all other games.

Wittgenstein neither considered himself a scientist nor accepted the idea of technological progress, and he departed clearly from the standard interpretations of scientific development as articulated first by the logical empiricists and then in revised form by Karl Popper (1902–1994) and his followers. In scattered remarks, such as those found in Culture and Value (1980), Wittgenstein expressed distrust of modern science and technology and considered them, along with industrialization, as the main causes of war. "Man has to awaken to wonder—and so perhaps do peoples. Science is a way of sending him to sleep again," he once wrote (Culture and Value, p. 5e). In his view, science not only fails to deal with the most significant issues but also tends to homogenize the world. The scientific age is associated with a decline in culture, and attempts to popularize science are, according to Wittgenstein, largely mistakes.

Influenced by Viennese cultural and artistic critics such as Karl Kraus (1874–1936), Wittgenstein was sensitive to the negative effects of modern science and technology. Skeptical of progress, he wrote, "It isn't absurd, e.g., to believe that the age of science and technology is the beginning of the end for humanity; that the idea of great progress is a delusion" (Culture and Value, p. 56e). The experience of both World Wars and the disappearance of a whole way of life help explain Wittgenstein's critical distrust of scientific and technological development alone as inherently beneficial. In response to the use of the atomic bomb, he actually considered the possibility that modern technology might destroy the whole human race. His pessimism was similar to that of many other intellectuals, including his mentor Bertrand Russell (1872–1970). However, Wittgenstein did not pursue these concerns in any rigorous way.

Many of Wittgenstein's ideas are key features in subsequent criticisms of science and technology. The political theorist Langdon Winner (1986) uses the form of life concept to explain how technology becomes a part of one's humanity, as a kind of second nature. As a consequence, technological artifacts often acquire a political character. From an epistemic point of view, sociologist David Bloor (1983) also draws on Wittgenstein to develop a critical assessment of the social nature of scientific knowledge. The so-called "strong program" of the Edinburgh school in the sociology of scientific knowledge uses Wittgenstein's ideas as a basis for their research. Wittgenstein's influence is pervasive and his thinking leaks out into many different fields, including discussions of values in science and technology. For instance, John Searle used Wittgensteinian techniques to attack claims for artificial intelligence (1986). Wittgenstein's main contribution to science and technology criticism consists of a heightened sensitivity to "bewitchment" (Wittgenstein's term) in technological discourse.

Logical Empiricism;; Progress;; Skepticism;; Von Wright, Georg Henrik.

Alonso Puelles, Andoni. (2002). El arte de lo indecible (Wittgenstein y las vanguardias). Cáceres, Spain: Universidad de Extremadura. An examination of mutual influences between Wittgenstein and art.

Bloor, David. (1983). Wittgenstein: A Social Theory of Knowledge. New York: Columbia University Press.

Glock, Hans-Johann. (1996). A Wittgenstein Dictionary. Oxford: Blackwell. The most useful general reference to the many aspects of Wittgenstein's thought and the controversies it has generated.

Kenney, Anthony. (1988). Wittgenstein. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin. The best English introduction to Wittgenstein's philosophy as a whole.

Monk, Ray. (1990). Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius. New York: Penguin. The best general biography.

Searle, John R. (1986). Minds, Brains and Science. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Winner, Langdon. (1986). The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig. (1922). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. C.K. Ogden and F.P. Ramsey. London: Routledge.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig. (1953). Philosophical Investigations, ed. G.E.M. Anscombe and R. Rhees. Oxford: Blackwell.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig. (1961). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. D.F. Pears and B.F. McGuinness. London: Routledge.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig. (1980). Culture and Value, ed. G.H. von Wright in collaboration with H. Nyman; trans. Peter Winch. Oxford: Blackwell.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig. (1993). Philosophical Occasions: 1912–1951, ed. James C. Klagge and Alfred Nordmann. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett. An extensive collection of shorter texts, including "A Lecture on Ethics."

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