Models circa 1914 and in Wittgenstein ’ s Tractatus

Wittgenstein remarked to a number of people that he got the main idea for the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus upon reading an account of the use of a physical scale model with dolls and model automobiles and busses in a courtroom case about an traffic accident. He had, he said, been serving in the Austrian army at the Front in the Fall of 1914 at the beginning of World War I when he read a newspaper account of the court trial, and, upon reflecting upon the use of the dolls and model automobiles, suddenly realized that a proposition is a picture. After Wittgenstein’s death, his friend von Wright wrote a memoir about him, in which he mentions the importance Wittgenstein put on reading about the use of a scale model. von Wright also suggests, in a footnote, that “it would be interesting to know whether Wittgenstein’s conception of the proposition as a picture is connected in any way with the Introduction to Heinrich Hertz’s Die Prinzipien der Mechanik”, remarking that Wittgenstein held the book in high esteem. 1 [ A shorter talk of the same title was given in Vienna on July 6, 2000 at HOPOS (History of Philosophy of Science Conference ) 2000. The HOPOS 2000 version has since been published in History of Philosophy of Science: New Trends and Directions , Michael Heidelberger and Friedrich Stadler (Eds.) Dordrecht-Boston-London: Kluwer 2002 (Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook 9/2001), pp. 121-135.]