Boltzmann and Wittgenstein or How Pictures Became Linguistic |
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Authors: | Visser Henk |
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Institution: | (1) Katholieke Universiteit Brabant, P.O. Box 90153, 5000 LE Tilburg, The Netherlands;(2) Universiteit Maastricht, P.O. Box 616, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands |
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Abstract: | Emphasis in historiography of science is naturally placed on the discoveries and inventions which scientists make and generally
less on new methods of doing science, but sometimes the latter can he an important clue to help us understand the former.
For example, while we all acknowledge how great the contributions of Maxwell, Boltzmann, Planck, and Einstein were to physics
from roughly 1870 to 1920, we often overlook the significance of a methodological phrase which was popular during that same
period, namely, what in German was called “Bildtheorie” or in English “picture theory”. But even before we can properly study
its significance we have to know what the theory was, but even this presents problems, since the meaning changed. In fact,
this paper is an attempt not only to describe the history of that change from Maxwell to Wittgenstein but to study in particular
how Boltzmann’s conception of Bildtheorie seems to have been at least partly incorporated into the approach of Ludwig Wittgenstein.
This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date. |
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