Remarks on Mathematics and Logic Volume III, 1939-1941

The second of five planned volumes, this book collects Wittgenstein's unabridged writings on mathematics and logic composed between 1939 and 1941.

In 1956, a significant but abridged portion of Ludwig Wittgenstein's 1937-1944 writings for a continuation of what became Philosophical Investigations was published as Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics. Now, in these five German-English facing-page volumes, the writings of Remarks on Mathematics and Logic are presented in full as Wittgenstein wrote them: in chronological order, without editorial omissions, selections, or rearrangements.

Volume III contains materials from 1939 to 1941, including previously unpublished--one manuscript and four manuscript parts--and one manuscript from which selections were made for previous abridgements.

The topics covered in this volume include surveyability and perspicuity in mathematics; Cantor and Gödel; Russellian logicism; geometrical cogency of proofs; consensus as part of the phenomenon of our calculating; rule-following and unwinding; consistency proofs; calculation as invention rather than discovery; superstitious fear of contradictions; why mathematicians cannot philosophize about mathematics; mathematical propositions are overdetermined; the idea of a mathematical reality; the connection between the sense of a mathematical proposition and its use; positioning a proposition in a system; an unproved mathematical proposition as the expression of a problem; the role of mathematical propositions in descriptions (of reality).

This edition will be the authoritative source for Wittgenstein's writings in their original context.