IMG79

Ernst blach

thrcc of us met sevcral times with Wittgenstein during the summer of 1927. Bcforc the first mccting, Schlick admonished us urgcntly not to start a dis-cussion of the kind to which we were accustomcd in the circle, bccause Wittgenstein did not want such a thing under any circumstanccs. We should cvcn be cautious in asking qucstions, becausc Wittgenstein was very sensitivc and casdy disturbed by a direct qucstion. . . .

His point of vicw and his attitudc toward pcoplc and problcms, cvcn theorctical problcms, were much morę similar to thosc of a creativc artist than to that of a scicntist, one might almost sav, similar to those of a religious propher or scer. . . . [Ile] tolcratcd no ciitical cxamination by others, oncc the insight had becn gained by an act of inspiration. . . .

I found the association with him most interesting, cxciting and reward-ing. Thcrcforc I regretted it when he brokc off the contact. From the be-ginning of 1929 on, Wittgenstein wished to mcci only with Schlick and Waismann, no longer with me or Feigl, who had also becomc acquaintcd with him in the mcaniime, let alonc with the circle. Although the differ-cncc in atlitudes and personalities c.\prcsscd itsclf only 011 ccrtain occasions, I understand very wcll that Wittgenstein fclt it all the timc and, unlike mc was disturbed by it. . . .

Ncurath was from the beginning very critical of Wittgensteins mystical attitudc, of his philosophy of the “incfTable", and of the “higher things". . . ,²³

F. A. von Hayek has added:

They [Schlick and Friedrich Waismann], in turn, camc to regard them-sclvcs as littlc morc than the e.\positors of Wittgcnstcin’s ideas, and to many of Schlick s friends in particular it bccamc a matter of surprise that this ferule and maturę mind should come to be so complctcly dominated by Wittgenstein that he would often hesitate to pronounce a philosophical question until he had hcard Wittgcnstcin’s latcst vicws on the subjcct.²⁴

Wittgenstein returncd to England in 1929 where he finally received a doctor’s degrcc and soon began tcaching at Cambridge. At the same timc he bccamc incrcasingly dissatisfied both with the Tractatus and with the interpretation which the Vienna Circle, in linę with Russell’s introduction, had placcd on it. Rudolf Carnap latcr describcd the situation:

When we found in Wittgensteins book statements about "the languagc,” v/c interpreted them as referring to an ideał languagc; and this rncant for us a formalizcd symbolic languagc. Later Wittgenstein cxplicitly rejccted this vicw. He had a sccptical and cvcn negativc vicw of the importancc of a symbolic languagc for thr clarificntion and corrcction of the toufusions in ordinary languagc and also in the customary languagc of philosophers

Maeh’s Influence on Early Logical Positwiim and on Quantum Theory

which, as hc had shown himsclf, were oftcn the cause of philosophical puzzlcs and pseudo-problcms. On this point, the majority of British analytic philosophers shared Wittgensteins vicw, in contrast to the Vienna Circle and to the majority of analytic philosophers in the United States.²⁵

Stephen Toulmin, who has choscn to defend Wittgenstein on many points, sccms to bclicvc that Mach’s influence was rcsponsible for the Vicnna Circlc’s "distorted understanding” of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus:

The argument of the Tractatus had employed the notinn of "atomie facts” to corrcspond with the "unit propositions" of an idealized formal languagc. . . . But Wittgenstein had said nothing to indicatc, how in praclicc, one was to rccognizc "atomie facts" or "unit propositions": this had no: becn his purposc. The logical positivists now remedied his omis-sion. Taking a hint from Mach and from RusscU’s own doctrine of "knowl-cdgc-by-acquaintancc" they cquatcd Wittgensteins “atomie facts" with the indubitablc and dircctly known "hard data" of Mach’s and Russclls cpistcmologics. . . .

[But for Wittgensteinl .dcfinitions can havc a logical forcc only or be-tween one set of words and another; thus the ambitiou to esublish formal relationships betwccn \vór‘ds and the worki, whether of "ostcnsivc” defini-tions or otherwise, was unacceptable. Yet for Mach, that ambition had bccn fundamcntal if cpistemology was to givc the kinds of guarantces for natural science that hc rcquircd.

This was the brcaking point . . . betwccn Wittgenstein and the logical positivists. They would hnve to choosc betwccn him and Mach: and by and large they chosc Mach. Yet they did $o at first withoutTonsciously renouncing Wittgenstein, for as they saw i;, there was nothing incompatible betwccn the insights of the two maestri. . . . The idea of "atomie facts’’ lent itsclf at oncc to an cpisteinological usc. if these facts were simply idcntificd with the cvidcncc of Machs "sensations". And a dozen other gnomie remarks in the Tractatus thrown out in passing could be reinter preted in the same sensc. . . . Thus was born the hybrid system of logical positivi$m which professed to put an end to all mctaphysics fi.e.. non-cxpcriential ontology] but succccdcd, rather, in rewriting the mctaphysics [i.e., cxpcriential ontology] of Hunie and Mach in the symbolism of Russell and Whitchcad.²⁰

Wittgenstein’s repudiation of the Vienna Circle includcd both its usc of ideał symbolic languąge and its particular typc of phcnomcnal-ism, but he did retain a prcscntational rcalism with rcspect to the “extcrnar’ or “physical world," nor should tliis rcalism be confuscd with older, morę traditional uses of the term.²⁷ The ‘ordinary languagc philosophy” of Wittgenstein and his numerom. Hnglish and American followcrs diflered from both naive and causa! rcalism in rcjecting

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