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Remarks on Mathematics and Logic

Volume IV, 1941–1943

The first of five planned volumes, this book collects Wittgenstein’s unabridged writings on mathematics and logic composed between 1941 and 1943.

In 1956, a significant but abridged portion of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s 1937–1944 writings for a continuation of what became Philosophical Investigations was published as Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics. Now, in the five German-English facing pages volumes of Remarks on Mathematics and Logic, these writings are presented in full as Wittgenstein wrote them: in chronological order, without editorial omissions, selections, or rearrangements.

Volume IV contains materials from 1941 to 1943, including one previously unpublished manuscript and three manuscripts from which selections were made for the previous abridgment. The topics covered in this volume include the philosophy of mathematics, mathematical foundationalism, surveyability in mathematics, language-games and proof-networks, Gödelian undecidability, pictures in mathematics, Cantorian diagonal proofs, applied mathematics without pure mathematics, and mathematics and chess, among others.

This German-English facing pages edition presents Wittgenstein’s writings in their original context—as Wittgenstein wrote them, in chronological order, and without editorial omissions, selections, or rearrangements.

Table of Contents

List of Abbreviations
Acknowledgments
Introduction


MS 161, Part III: June 5, 1941–June 22, 1941
MS 163, Part II: June 22, 1941–July 4, 1941
MS 124, Part I: June 6, 1941–July 4, 1941
MS 163, Part III: July 6, 1941–September 29, 1941
MS 125: December 28, 1941–October 16, 1942
MS 126: Treating Only Logic and Mathematics: October 20, 1942–January 6, 1943
 

Notes
Appendix A: Table of Contents for Remarks on Mathematics and Logic, 1937–1944
Appendix B: The First and Third Editions of RFM and Their Constituent Manuscripts and Typescripts
Appendix C: RFM Content in This Volume
Appendix D: Dating Wittgenstein’s RML Manuscripts, Manuscript Parts, and Typescripts
Appendix E: Wittgenstein’s Original Drawings
Glossary
Index

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