Ludwig Wittgenstein

1889-1951 Wittgenstein, Ludwig

When a small child, who does not yet speak, falls and bumps his little head, there is no doubt as to what the cries and tears mean.  That is natural language.  It is only later that little one, now a rambunctious little boy comes in from playing, possibly with those familiar tears in his eyes, and says “Mommy, I hurt my head.”, or maybe, “Mami, me lastimé la cabeza.”  That is artificial language.  It has meaning only because we have agreed what each word means and what they mean when strung together.  This is the fundamental observation of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951).  His seminal work, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, uses this observation to examine the nature of language and its relationship to what is real.  The book is odd in that it consists almost entirely of declarative statements, each numbered under seven main topics.  It starts this way:

1 The world is everything that is the case.

1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things.

1.11 The world is determined by the facts, and by these being all the facts.

… and so it goes for many, many statements until he ends with,

7 Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.