Some philosophical consequences of Wittgenstein's aeronautical research

Perspectives on Science 9 (1):1-37 (2001)
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Abstract

: Before he studied philosophy under Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein was trained as an engineer at the Technische Hochschule in Berlin. He then worked as a graduate research engineer at the University of Manchester, where he designed a variable volume combustion chamber and received a patent for an innovative propeller design in 1911. I argue that the methodology of contemporary aeronautical engineering research, involving the systematic use of experiments and scale models, affected the Bild theory of language in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The principle of similitude, underlying the mathematical resolution of scale effect problems associated with wind tunnel research on models, is reflected in the law of projection in the Tractatus

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References found in this work

Tractatus logico-philosophicus.Ludwig Wittgenstein - 1922 - Filosoficky Casopis 52:336-341.
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.Ludwig Wittgenstein - 1956 - Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 12 (1):109-110.
Notebooks, 1914-1916.Ludwig Wittgenstein - 1961 - Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Edited by G. H. von Wright & G. E. M. Anscombe.
Ludwig Wittgenstein: the duty of genius.Ray Monk - 1990 - New York: Maxwell Macmillan International.
Wittgenstein's Vienna.Allan Janik - 1973 - Chicago: I.R. Dee. Edited by Stephen Toulmin.

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