Natalia Tomashpolskaia
University of Malaga (UMA)
In CV §16 Wittgenstein listed the thinkers who influenced his ideas, among them and on the first and the second place (respectively) were mentioned Boltzmann and Hertz. In this paper author argues that the ideas of H. Hertz and L. Boltzmann on the representation of reality had an extraordinary influence on the development of Wittgenstein’s ideas, not only early but also later (formation of image as a conception of thing, picture, symbol, representation; atomism, Bildtheorie, critique of naïve beliefs, anthropomorphic representation of God), It is being proposed that Boltzmann’s atomism (physical and ontological) and Boltzmann-Hertz’s concept of Bildtheorie significantly directly influenced Wittgenstein’s ideas. Atomism was fully represented in Tractatus, while the Bildtheorie is traced throughout all Wittgenstein’s philosophy. Moreover, Wittgenstein, studying Hertz’s and Boltzmann’s not only physical, but also philosophical ideas, was influenced by the understanding of the entire difference between science and philosophy and the insufficiency of science to resolve the very problems of humanity and answer the existential questions. In his lecture on aesthetic in 1939, he claimed: ‘Cf: “Physics doesn’t explain anything. It just describes cases of concomitance”’ (1967, §31). In §32 Wittgenstein wrote that we ‘are taking for granted the atomic picture of the world,’ but ‘what does this come to? We are so used to this picture that it’s as though we had all seen atoms. Every educated eight-year-old child knows that things are made of atoms. We would think it lack of education if a person didn’t think of a rod as being made of atoms.’ The point is that we take scientific postulates for granted, we believe in them. ‘My life consists in my being content to accept many things,’ added Wittgenstein in OC §342. His words in §342 echo Hertz’s explanations of the scientific statements, ‘it belongs to the logic of our scientific investigations that certain things are indeed not doubted.’ According to Hertz it was that we chose and vary the propositions (Sätze) that we take as fundamental (welche wir zu Grunde legen) (1984: 4). Also, there are traced natur-philosophical parallels: it should be a ‘certain conformity between nature and our thought’ (zwischen der Natur und unserem Geiste) (ibid.; Hertz 1894: 1); Darin, und nur darin besteht auch die (prästabilierte) Harmonie zwischen Welt und Gedanken (Wittgenstein, TBT 2005: 281, pas. 381).
Chair: Szymon Sapalski
Time: September 6th, 18:10-18:40
Location: SR 1.006
SOPhiA 2026 