Ludwig Wittgenstein published his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
[or Logical-Philosophical Treatise] in 1921.* Written shortly
after WWI, during which its author had suffered something akin
to a nervous breakdown following service in the war, as a
soldier and later as a prisoner. In philosophical circles, the
Tractatus (as it its commonly called), has been a notorious and
admired text in its field, as well as a model of thought and
approach for others in disciplines as widely separated as
physics, linguistics, literature, music and so forth.
Wittgenstein was an eccentric. Inheriting a huge fortune from
his family, he undertook to divest it at once, taking a sort of
secular vow of poverty for the rest of his life. Obsessed by
certain philosophical questions, he was at first viewed by some
as a hack or nut-case. Eventually, after years of study, he
assumed the chair of philosophy at Cambridge (England). He
published little during his lifetime, though his own collected
works and the books made of the contents of