Tractatus Logico Philosophicus

If I say, I understood everything Wittgenstein said in this book then that will be lying. I might re-read this book again. Then I'll be able to review this review again and see where my thoughts differ.

This book is about philosophy, and logic in particular (any one can deduce that from the name, meh!). However, I think philosophers haven't been agreed upon what is a part of philosophy and what is not. Therefore, we'll be sticking to what Wittgenstein thinks philosophy is:

Philosophy is not one of the natural sciences.

(The word “philosophy” must mean something which stands above or below, but not beside the natural sciences.)

The object of philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts.

Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.

A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations.

The result of philosophy is not a number of “philosophical propositions”, but to make propositions clear.

Philosophy should make clear and delimit sharply the thoughts which otherwise are, as it were, opaque and blurred.

Everything you have to say, can be said in three words

proposition

Probability is a generalization.

It involves a general description of a propositional form. Only in default of certainty do we need probability.

If we are not completely acquainted with a fact, but know something about its form.

We cannot compare any process with the “passage of time”—there is no such thing—but only with another process (say, with the movement of the chronometer).

Hence the description of the temporal sequence of events is only possible if we support ourselves on another process.

It is exactly analogous for space. When, for example, we say that neither of two events (which mutually exclude one another) can occur, because there is no cause why the one should occur rather than the other, it is really a matter of our being unable to describe one of the two events unless there is some sort of asymmetry. And if there is such an asymmetry, we can regard this as the cause of the occurrence of the one and of the non-occurrence of the other.