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Abstract
In 1929 Wittgenstein saw the Tractatus collapse before his eyes. By 1931 a framework for a new view was in place. In the interim, one of Wittgenstein’s main interests was mathematics, or philosophy thereof. In particular, he was interested in Hilbert, and, more generally, formalism. Which led him to Frege (Grundgesetze, Vol. 2). Here he came across the germ of the idea of a language game as this notion figures in the Investigations. In tracing this history we can also, I suggest, identify at least much of the work that notion is designed to do. The essay ends with a discussion of some of that work, as found in the first 22 paragraphs of the Investigations.
