In 1931, when writing about those who had inspired him, Wittgenstein singled out Boltzmann; nobody seems to know why, however. Most commentators have ignored this remark, while a few have tried to guess what the inspiration might have been by searching the popular and philosophical writings of Boltzmann. In this article, I hypothesize that Wittgenstein may have been inspired by Boltzmann’s scientific research program from his famous 1877 article. This hypothesis is not confirmed-or rejected-by any surviving documents. But to some extent (considering the role of Fleck’s creative misunderstandings) there are two explanations for the origins of the two strange theorems underlying the Tractatus’s ontology: (1) each situation can be the case or not the case while everything else remains the same; (2) the facts are not subject to the laws of nature. My hypothesis also makes it understandable why Wittgenstein developed his logical theory of probability. So, let’s keep it in mind.
This paper argues that the Tractatus breaks deeply with Frege’s account of truth-bearers as mind-independent entities, and is closer to the act-theoretic approach recently defended, for example, by Scott Soames and Peter Hanks. For the Tractatus, the primary truth-bearers are facts-in-use, which essentially involve acts, as well as facts functioning as instruments of representation. The Tractarian account, it is further argued, can vindicate three platitudes that constitute the main motivation of Frege’s approach.
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