January 28, 2017 Saturday
Bedtime Story
The Seven Propositions of The Tractatus
The Tractatus is written in an absolute frosty and stern style,
much like the 3 books of Newton’s Principia.
May be it was so because he was writing and finishing it off as a
prisoner of war in the Italian front.
The Italian Front of the World War I took off when Italy joined
the Allies in the greed of annexing some parts of Austria.
Unexpectedly for the Italians, the battle turned out to be a
horrible and prolonged trench warfare fought at very high altitudes in frosty
cold winters.
The approach is terse and pithy but in contrast to Newton’s
Principia has no arguments, proof or reason but rather declarations in the form
of propositions that is stated as if self-evident.
This I think is the greatest problem with all the philosophy no
matter how impressive it may seem.
It has almost a religion-like air to it though it is far less dogmatic.
It is worth highlighting broadly the 7 propositions of the book:
1. The world is everything that is the case.
Brief explanation: This proposition declares that facts are the
quintessential elements of the world.
2. What is the case (a fact) is the existence of states of
affairs.
3. A logical picture of facts is a thought.
Brief Explanation: These two propositions when elaborated mean
that the world is composed of interconnected atomic facts and propositions give
the picture of the world.
Here he begins to delve into his Picture theory of language or
picture theory of meaning.
4. A thought is a proposition with a sense.
5. A proposition is a truth-function of elementary propositions.
Brief Explanation of the 4th and the 5th
proposition: In these two propositions, Wittgenstein is making his making his
most scathing attacks on philosophy and its very nature.
He states that philosophy asks questions that are utterly
nonsensical.
That they are nonsense is because the philosophers fail to understand
the logic of our language.
Wittgenstein under these 2 propositions also goes on to elaborate
on truth tables and truth conditions.
These are essential for semantic analysis in first-order logic.
We shall take up the 6th and the 7th
proposition in the nights to come.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.in/
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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