Pascal Zambito

“Tell me," Wittgenstein once asked a friend, "why do people always say, it was natural for man to assume that the sun went round the earth rather than that the earth was rotating?" His friend replied, "Well, obviously because it just looks as though the Sun is going round the Earth." Wittgenstein replied, "Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as though the Earth was rotating?” What would it have looked like if we looked at all sciences from the viewpoint of Wittgenstein’s philosophy? Wittgenstein is undoubtedly one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. His complex body of work has been analysed by numerous scholars, from mathematicians and physicists, to philosophers, linguists, and beyond. This volume brings together some of his central perspectives as applied to the modern sciences and studies the influence they may have on the thought processes underlying science and on the world view it engenders. The contributions stem from leading scholars in philosophy, mathematics, physics, economics, psychology and human sciences; all of them have written in an accessible style that demands little specialist knowledge, whilst clearly portraying and discussing the deep issues at hand.

This volume brings together essays that explore the intersections between Nietzsche and Wittgenstein from various perspectives. While some chapters focus on the philological and biographical connections of Wittgenstein's reading of Nietzsche, others reflect on the ideas that are implicitly shared by the two thinkers. For Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, philosophy is inextricably connected to ethics and the arts and therefore takes a peculiar method that differs from the sciences. Nevertheless, their thinking strives for knowledge and truth by means of discursive text forms, however unconventional they may be. The first group of chapters contextualize explicit references to Nietzsche in Wittgenstein's writings and clarify their philosophical function. In Part II, the contributors take a philosophical problem as their starting point and show how it can be illuminated by comparing or contrasting Wittgensteinian and Nietzschean arguments and methods. Together the chapters trace Nietzsche's influence on Wittgenstein's thought concerning the critique of language, ethics, aesthetics, religion, and philosophical method. Wittgenstein and Nietzsche will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in the history of philosophy and intellectual history.

Wittgenstein’s philosophy is permeated by spatial imagery. This is true not only of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus with its prominent “logical space”, but also in his so-called middle-period, especially in the time from 1929 to 1933, one of the most productive episodes of his life: in this period he created ten manuscript volumes which form the backbone of much of his later philosophy. Later writings consist to a large extent in revisions of these remarks, leading to new directions the closer they get towards the Philosophical Investigations. One point where the “late” departs from the “middle” Wittgenstein is the apparent disappearance of the spatial expressions that were so conspicuous in the early 30s. What I would like to suggest in this chapter is not to neglect the methodical role of this imagery in Wittgenstein’s thinking and instead to take it as a central characteristic of his philosophy. What is hinted at with the usage of “space” and “geometry” in the early and middle period survives in the later writings where it appears under different names, but with largely similar functions.

Wittgenstein’s philosophy is permeated by spatial imagery. This is true not only of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus with its prominent “logical space”, but also in his so-called middle-period, especially in the time from 1929 to 1933, one of the most productive episodes of his life: in this period he created ten manuscript volumes which form the backbone of much of his later philosophy. Later writings consist to a large extent in revisions of these remarks, leading to new directions the closer they get towards the Philosophical Investigations. One point where the “late” departs from the “middle” Wittgenstein is the apparent disappearance of the spatial expressions that were so conspicuous in the early 30s. What I would like to suggest in this chapter is not to neglect the methodical role of this imagery in Wittgenstein’s thinking and instead to take it as a central characteristic of his philosophy. What is hinted at with the usage of “space” and “geometry” in the early and middle period survives in the later writings where it appears under different names, but with largely similar functions.