Witti-Buch2 2001.qxd - Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society

The Net Metaphor Reconsidered: Wittgenstein's
Conception of Science in the Tractatus
Remko van der Geest
There can be no doubt that the physicists Heinrich Hertz and Ludwig Boltzmann exerted
an influence on the young Wittgenstein. Both their names were mentioned by
Wittgenstein in 1931 in a revealing passage of his notebook in which he reflected about
his own original philosophical contributions:
There is truth in my idea that really in my thinking I am only reproductive. I
believe that I have never invented a new line of thought: that has always been
given me by someone else. I have only seized on it immediately with a
passionate urge for the work of clarification. That is how Boltzmann, Hertz,
Schopenhauer, Frege, Russell, Kraus, Loos, Weininger, Spengler, Sraffa
influenced me. (McGuinness 1988, 84)
According to Brian McGuinness (1979, 36) Wittgenstein presumably listed these
names "in the order in which their influence was exerted". If this is right, Boltzmann was
the first to have an important influence on Wittgenstein's thought.
It is known that Wittgenstein possessed a copy of Boltzmann's Populäre Schriften.
He bought and read this work soon after it was published in 1905 (Nedo et al. 1983, 63).
He also intended to study under Boltzmann at the University of Vienna in the fall of 1906,
a wish that was frustrated by Boltzmann's suicide in the very same year.
Boltzmann's influence on Wittgenstein is usually construed by pointing out some
parallels between Boltzmann's rather rudimentary thoughts about language and
Wittgenstein's philosophy of language (e.g. Wilson 1989). However, to the best of my
knowledge no one has yet investigated Boltzmann's influence on Wittgenstein's
conception of science in the Tractatus. Hertz is commonly considered to be the only one
who has shaped Wittgenstein's Tractarian views of science. This, I hold, does not suffice
for an exhaustive account of, in particular, Wittgenstein's net metaphor. In the sequel I
will offer a deeper understanding of the net metaphor by taking Boltzmann's influence
into account as well.
The net metaphor appears in Wittgenstein's Notebooks for the first time in a section
dating from December 6th 1914. These passages constitute the largest and central part
of the net metaphor and reappear almost entirely in the Tractatus as the theses 6.341,
342