Pictures, models, and measures

Abstract

In this paper, I enrich the context of Wittgenstein's Tractatus given over a decade ago in my book Witttgenstein Flies A Kite (and related earlier works dating from 2000). I've since located a sketch reprinted from a 1914 Paris magazine showing a lawyer using a model bus and dolls to depict a traffi c accident; I present it here along with a discussion of the modelmaker movement of that time. Th e modelmaker movement was a movement at the intersection of popular culture and technical expertise that really needs to be understood and recognized in discussing Wittgenstein's use of Modell and Bild. I discuss its role in relation to experimental models used in scientifi c research. Other new aspects presented here include: the very special role of model-fl ying clubs (known in Germany as Modell-Flugverein); the use of scientifi c forensics in courts of law, really just beginning then (c. 1914), and a part of popular culture as well; the signifi cance of more recent work by others on Boltzmann's personal interest in fl ight, and on the widespread but now-forgotten discussion of dimensional analysis in the history of physics. I conclude that all these lend support to the views on the Tractatus I laid out in my book, and summarize and elaborate on some of them here, inasmuch as space permits. More generally, I argue that the philosophical community interested in interpreting Wittgenstein's early works stands to gain from becoming better acquainted with the scientifi c and technological developments of the milieu in which they were conceived.