David Peat

Language 75Wittgenstein’s personality and approach are so exceptional that itis worth spending some moments to unfold his life story, for the creationsof any individual can never be divorced from his or her personallife. Wittgenstein was born into a wealthy and cultured family in theVienna of Gustav Mahler, Sigmund Freud, Arnold Schoenberg, the storiesof Arthur Schnitzler, and the architecture of Adolph Loos. JohannesBrahms was a regular visitor to the Wittgenstein home, and Ravel dedicatedhis Piano Concerto for the Left Hand to Ludwig’s brother Paul,who had been wounded in World War I.Wittgenstein studied at home until the age of 14 when he went toschool at Linz. His original plan, to study physics with LudwigBoltzmann, was thwarted by that scientist’s suicide. 3 Instead of doingphysics Wittgenstein enrolled in Manchester University and in 1908began to study aeronautics. His attempts to design a new type of propellerinvolved a great deal of mathematics, and his interest graduallyshifted to the foundations of that subject. At that time BertrandRussell’s Principles of Mathematics (a prelude to the great PrincipiaMathematica) had been published, and so Wittgenstein began to readRussell and Frege. As a result he moved to Cambridge in 1911 andrapidly learned all Russell had to teach him.To Russell, Wittgenstein appeared a young man of incredible intellectualbrilliance, but also deeply tormented and at times driven tothoughts of suicide. After two years with Russell, Wittgenstein movedto a farm at Skjolden, northeast of Bergen, Norway. There he remained,thinking deeply about philosophical problems, until the outbreak ofWorld War I, when he volunteered for the Austrian army.Already Wittgenstein had become deeply critical of Russell’s logicalatomism. Russell had made significant contributions to the foundationsof mathematics and was also well known to the general public.But as a serious philosopher his reputation was less secure. Russell’sskill lay in the ease and clarity of his writing, and he was not afraid to3Boltzmann had invented statistical mechanics, founding the science of thermodynamicsupon the motion of underlying molecules. The severity of Ernst Mach’sattack on his theory was one of the motives for Boltzmann’s suicide.