Missing

When I was young, I thought I knew something about logic, spent quality time on it. I also read about earnest undergraduates of the 1930's who spent their time in the pub arguing about an eminence called Wittgenstein. But I never, at least as far as I can remember, heard about him in lectures or otherwise troubled myself about him.

Then a few days ago, in reference 2, Langer spends some pages on him and I thought it was time to repair this hole in my education and turned to Abebooks. Who turned up a respectable copy of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus from Routledge & Kegan Paul, from 1972. 

A work which has gone through many reprints, corrections and translations since it origins in 1921. One supposes that it was very much the thing in Langer's formative years.

With this copy containing a preface by Bertrand Russell and a parallel text in German and English of Tractatus itself. Presumably put together at a time when respectable philosophers, logicians and mathematicians were expected to know German, even if they were English.

We will see if I get beyond opening the book, beyond the opening sentence: 'The world is all that is the case'. All very biblical, all very gospel according to St. John.

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein. A chap whom I now know to have had an interesting life.

Reference 2: Philosophy in a new key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art - Langer, S. K. – 1942.