IIRC, in “On Certainty” in particular, Wittgenstein had a lot to say about the role of language and how it is not primarily a mechanism for evaluating the truth-value of propositions but rather a mechanism for getting people to do things. In particular, I think he dismisses the entire enterprise of Cartesian doubt as just a game we play with language; arguing that statements like “There exists an external reality” and “There exists no external reality” simply don’t mean anything.
So I’d be surprised if he were on board with language as a particularly useful tool for hard facts or natural sciences, either.
Admittedly, it’s been like 20 years since I read it, and it’s a decidedly gnomic book to begin with, and I’m no kind of expert on Wittgenstein. So take it with a pound of salt.
The Tractatus is a product of what is called the early or first Wittgenstein, while “On Certainty” belongs to his latter stage. By that time he had repudiated the emphasis of the Tractatus on logical correspondence with facts and switched to speaking of language games and practical uses. In both phases his position on “unspeakable” things like ethics and metaphysics was similar (roughly the one Danfly summarizes at the beginning of the parent quote).
IIRC, in “On Certainty” in particular, Wittgenstein had a lot to say about the role of language and how it is not primarily a mechanism for evaluating the truth-value of propositions but rather a mechanism for getting people to do things. In particular, I think he dismisses the entire enterprise of Cartesian doubt as just a game we play with language; arguing that statements like “There exists an external reality” and “There exists no external reality” simply don’t mean anything.
So I’d be surprised if he were on board with language as a particularly useful tool for hard facts or natural sciences, either.
Admittedly, it’s been like 20 years since I read it, and it’s a decidedly gnomic book to begin with, and I’m no kind of expert on Wittgenstein. So take it with a pound of salt.
The Tractatus is a product of what is called the early or first Wittgenstein, while “On Certainty” belongs to his latter stage. By that time he had repudiated the emphasis of the Tractatus on logical correspondence with facts and switched to speaking of language games and practical uses. In both phases his position on “unspeakable” things like ethics and metaphysics was similar (roughly the one Danfly summarizes at the beginning of the parent quote).