|
|
|
 |
|
|
35MM FILM LEADER WITH TEST PATTERN #1416/2009
(  Satoshi Kinoshita )
| Series: | Prints on paper: 35mm Film Leader | | Medium: | Giclée on Japanese matte paper | | Size (inches): | 16.5 x 11.7 (paper size) | | Size (mm): | 420 x 297 (paper size) | | Edition size: | 25 | | Catalog #: | PP_0176 | | Description: | From an edition of 25. Signed, titled, date, copyright, edition in pencil on the reverse / Aside from the numbered edition of 5 artist's proofs and 2 printer's proofs.
Review of P. Coffey's Science of Logic (1913): a polemical book review, written in 1912 for the March 1913 issue of The Cambridge Review when Wittgenstein was an undergraduate studying with Russell. The review is the earliest public record of Wittgenstein's philosophical views.
Review: P. Coffey, The Science of Logic (1913)
reviewed by Ludwig Wittgenstein
The Cambridge Review, Vol. 34, No. 853, March 6, 1913. 351.
The Science of Logic: an inquiry into the principles of accurate thought and scientific method. By P. Coffey, Ph.D. (Louvain), Professor of Logic and Metaphysics, Maynooth College. Longmans, Green & Co 1912.
In no branch of learning can an author disregard the results of honest research with so much impunity as he can in Philosophy and Logic. To this circumstance we owe the publication of such a book as Mr Coffey’s Science of Logic: and only as a typical example of the work of many logicians of to-day does this book deserve consideration. The author’s Logic is that of the scholastic philosophers, and he makes all their mistakes—of course with the usual references to Aristotle. (Aristotle, whose name is taken so much in vain by our logicians, would turn in his grave if he knew that so many Logicians know no more about Logic to-day than he did 2,000 years ago). The author has not taken the slightest notice of the great work of the modern mathematical logicians—work which has brought about an advance in Logic comparable only to that which made Astronomy out of Astrology, and Chemistry out of Alchemy.
Mr Coffey, like many logicians, draws great advantage from an unclear way of expressing himself; for if you cannot tell whether he means to say Yes or No, it is difficult to argue against him. However, even through his foggy expression, many grave mistakes can be recognised clearly enough; and I propose to give a list of some of the most striking ones, and would advise the student of Logic to trace these mistakes and their consequences in other books on Logic also. (The numbers in brackets indicate the pages of Mr Coffey’s book—volume I.—where a mistake occurs for the first time; the illustrative examples are my own).
[36] The author believes that all propositions are of the subject-predicate form.
[31] He believes that reality is changed by becoming an object of our thoughts.
[6] He confounds the copula is with the word is expressing identity. (The word is has obviously different meanings in the propositions—
Twice two is four
and Socrates is mortal.)
[46] He confounds things with the classes to which they belong. (A man is obviously something quite different from mankind.)
[48] He confounds classes and complexes. (Mankind is a class whose elements are men; but a library is not a class whose elements are books, because books become parts of a library only by standing in certain spatial relations to one another—while classes are independent of the relations between their members.)
[47] He confounds complexes and sums. (Two plus two is four, but four is not a complex of two and itself.)
This list of mistakes could be extended a good deal.
The worst of such books is that they prejudice sensible people against the study of Logic.
Ludwig Wittgenstein.
The review of P. Coffey's The Science of Logic was written by Ludwig Wittgenstein, and appeared in the March 6, 1913 issue of The Cambridge Review. It is now available in the Public Domain.
-http://fair-use.org/the-cambridge-review/1913/03/06/reviews/the-science-of-logic
Arrival at Cambridge -
Wittgenstein wanted to study with Frege, but Frege suggested he attend the University of Cambridge to study under Russell, so on 18 October 1911 Wittgenstein arrived unannounced at Russell's rooms in Trinity College. Russell was having tea with C.K. Ogden, when, according to Russell, "... an unknown German appeared, speaking very little English but refusing to speak German. He turned out to be a man who had learned engineering at Charlottenburg, but during this course had acquired, by himself, a passion for the philosophy of mathematics & has now come to Cambridge on purpose to hear me." He was soon not only attending Russell's lectures, but dominating them. The lectures were poorly attended and Russell often found himself lecturing only to C.D. Broad, E.H. Neville, and H.T.J. Norton, so he was quite pleased at first when Wittgenstein turned up, though less so as the weeks wore on. Wittgenstein started following him after lectures back to his rooms to discuss more philosophy, until it was time for the evening meal in Hall. Russell grew irritated; he wrote to his lover Lady Ottoline Morrell: "My German friend threatens to be an infliction."
Russell revised his opinion, and in fact came to be overpowered by Wittgenstein's forceful personality. He wrote in November 1911 that he had at first thought Wittgenstein might be a crank, but soon decided he was a genius: "Some of his early views made the decision difficult. He maintained, for example, at one time that all existential propositions are meaningless. This was in a lecture room, and I invited him to consider the proposition: 'There is no hippopotamus in this room at present.' When he refused to believe this, I looked under all the desks without finding one; but he remained unconvinced." Three months after Wittgenstein's arrival he told Morrell: "I love him & feel he will solve the problems I am too old to solve ... He is the young man one hopes for." The role-reversal between him and Wittgenstein was such that he wrote in 1916, after Wittgenstein had criticized his own work: "His criticism, 'tho I don't think he realized it at the time, was an event of first-rate importance in my life, and affected everything I have done since. I saw that he was right, and I saw that I could not hope ever again to do fundamental work in philosophy."
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein#Arrival_at_Cambridge
| | | send price request |
|
|
|
|
|
Gallery opening
500 Fifth Avenue, Suite 1820 (Between 42nd and 43rd)
...
|
|
more
|
|
