Early Analytic Philosophy
"Models and Multiplicities" (revise and resubmit; draft available here)
Although it is well known that Heinrich Hertz was one of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s earliest influences, Wittgenstein’s explicit references to Hertz in the Tractatus have remained almost entirely uninterpreted. My central claim in this paper is that Wittgenstein’s reference to Hertz’s ‘dynamical models’ has important implications for a long-standing debate concerning whether or not the Tractatus explains the sense of colloquial sentences by offering an account of the fundamental structure of reality.
I argue that Wittgenstein’s reference to dynamical models provides strong evidence for the view that the Tractatus contains no such ontological theory. I show that, just as Hertz’s dynamical models capture the essential content of a mechanical description (what all descriptions of the same system have in common), so Tractarian analysis captures the essential content of a sentence (what all sentences that express the same sense have in common). I argue that treating Hertzian analysis as a model of Tractarian analysis provides important insights into how such analysis terminates, and that in neither case is there a need to appeal to an underlying ontology.
Although it is well known that Heinrich Hertz was one of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s earliest influences, Wittgenstein’s explicit references to Hertz in the Tractatus have remained almost entirely uninterpreted. My central claim in this paper is that Wittgenstein’s reference to Hertz’s ‘dynamical models’ has important implications for a long-standing debate concerning whether or not the Tractatus explains the sense of colloquial sentences by offering an account of the fundamental structure of reality.
I argue that Wittgenstein’s reference to dynamical models provides strong evidence for the view that the Tractatus contains no such ontological theory. I show that, just as Hertz’s dynamical models capture the essential content of a mechanical description (what all descriptions of the same system have in common), so Tractarian analysis captures the essential content of a sentence (what all sentences that express the same sense have in common). I argue that treating Hertzian analysis as a model of Tractarian analysis provides important insights into how such analysis terminates, and that in neither case is there a need to appeal to an underlying ontology.