Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Preface
- 1 The effects of a broken home: Bertrand Russell and Cambridge
- 2 I. A. Richards, F. R. Leavis and Cambridge English
- 3 Emily Davies, the Sidgwicks and the education of women in Cambridge
- 4 Radioastronomy in Cambridge
- 5 Three Cambridge prehistorians
- 6 John Maynard Keynes
- 7 Mathematics in Cambridge and beyond
- 8 James Stuart: engineering, philanthropy and radical politics
- 9 The Darwins in Cambridge
- 10 How the Burgess Shale came to Cambridge; and what happened
- 11 Ludwig Wittgenstein
- 12 ‘Brains in their fingertips’: physics at the Cavendish Laboratory 1880–1940
- 13 J. N. Figgis and the history of political thought in Cambridge
- 14 Molecular biology in Cambridge
- 15 James Frazer and Cambridge anthropology
- 16 Michael Oakeshott
11 - Ludwig Wittgenstein
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Preface
- 1 The effects of a broken home: Bertrand Russell and Cambridge
- 2 I. A. Richards, F. R. Leavis and Cambridge English
- 3 Emily Davies, the Sidgwicks and the education of women in Cambridge
- 4 Radioastronomy in Cambridge
- 5 Three Cambridge prehistorians
- 6 John Maynard Keynes
- 7 Mathematics in Cambridge and beyond
- 8 James Stuart: engineering, philanthropy and radical politics
- 9 The Darwins in Cambridge
- 10 How the Burgess Shale came to Cambridge; and what happened
- 11 Ludwig Wittgenstein
- 12 ‘Brains in their fingertips’: physics at the Cavendish Laboratory 1880–1940
- 13 J. N. Figgis and the history of political thought in Cambridge
- 14 Molecular biology in Cambridge
- 15 James Frazer and Cambridge anthropology
- 16 Michael Oakeshott
Summary
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) was the youngest son of a wealthy and cultured Viennese family. In accordance with his father's wishes, he had studied engineering in Germany. In 1908 he came to England to pursue research in aeronautical engineering at the University of Manchester. In the course of research into the design of a jet-reaction propeller he was led into problems about the foundations of mathematics. He apparently read Russell's Principles of Mathematics and it was probably the appendix to Russell's book which led Wittgenstein first to read the works of the German logician Gottlob Frege, and then to visit him in Jena. On Frege's advice, the young Wittgenstein approached Russell with a view to studying philosophy with him. He came to Cambridge in 1911, and remained there until 1913, working with Russell, first as pupil and within six months as equal, on fundamental problems in the philosophy of logic and metaphysics.
Frege and Russell were the moving spirits behind the philosophical revival of interest in formal logic that dominates twentieth-century philosophy. They were the inventors of modern mathematical logic. Both had been motivated by the desire to establish mathematics on logical foundations. Russell, whose interests were wider than Frege's, believed that the application of the new logical techniques to traditional philosophical problems would herald a transformation of philosophy.
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- Information
- Cambridge Minds , pp. 142 - 159Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1994