I’ve often heard a variation on the following story about Ludwig Wittgenstein:
However, what I’d like to know is, is this based on a real incident? Can it be accurately sourced? The closest I’ve so far been able to find is this page, where it is attributed to the play ‘Jumpers’ by Tom Stoppard. Lacking access to its text, however, I can’t confirm this.
Many thanks in advance!
I think it is most probable that this is just a joke invented by Stoppard. Wittgenstein, of all people, should have been able to be sensitive to the fact that words are used in different ways in different contexts and circumstances. (Here, the friend, who is, of course, correct, is clearly using “looks” to mean something like “seems”.) I suppose one could argue, however, that the fact that Wittgenstein had a strong tendency toward literalism (which is what Stoppard is satirizing) ws just that lead him to erect the realization that words are actually used differently in different circumstances into the basis of a whole approach to philosophy.
FWIW, I have read several biographical accounts and reminiscences of Wittgenstein in my time (albeit a long time ago) and this alleged saying does not ring a bell.
Admittedly I have also seen Jumpers, also a long time ago, and I don’t remember it from that either, but it certainly sounds like Stoppard’s sort of joke.
Was Wittgenstein known to be a pedantic jerk?
While it doesn’t show up in Google Books, I’ve found the quote in Jumpers using Amazon’s ‘look inside’ feature, so I guess it does originate there; of course, it’s possible that Stoppard himself got it from somewhere, but seeing as this is the only source I’ve managed to find so far, that probably isn’t too likely.
I’ve heard another Wittgenstein story, sorta similar to this one (not as good, though).
Wittgenstein’s friend has had surgery. Wittgenstein asks him how he feels. “Like a dog that’s been hit by a truck”, the friend wearily groans. Wittgenstein gets angry: “How would you know what a dog feels after being hit by a truck?”
The story also appears to be in Anscombe’s “An Introduction To Wittgenstein’s Tractatus” book that predates the play. I’ve checked that it is in there via google books. The wording of this version is very close, but not identical, to the (apparent) Stoppard version. In the “Yale Philosophy Review, 2008, Issue 4, p.81”, an interview with Nathan Salmon has him saying, “The anecdote is included in Tom Stoppard’s philosophical play Jumpers. Elizabeth Anscombe personally assured me that the anecdote is absolutely true.”
It dates from after the Stoppard play, but James Burke used the quote in the opening episode of his BBC/PBS series The Day the Universe Changed (1985). He didn’t say where he got it, but I’ll bet it was from the play Jumpers.
Ah, very good! Thanks for digging that up!
It was first quoted by Wittgenstein’s student Elizabeth Anscombe on p.151 of her *'An Introduction to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus’ *(London, 1959).
From this more recent use by Thomas Mettzinger:
Ha, I’ve actually got Metzinger’s book queued to read, so I guess I would have found out eventually… Thanks again!
No, but he was a beery swine.
That sort of makes sense if he said it in the Tractatus era, which was before he realized (or before he realized that it was important) that words can have more than one “proper” use. On the other hand, (though I am not quite sure of the timeline) I don’t think Anscombe would have known him until he was fairly well past that.