simple elements or objects—in effect, those designated by Russell’s logically
proper names—as the ultimate constituents of the world. Facts are combina-
tions of objects into states of affairs; all meaningful statements allegedly can
be translated into propositions about these, and the totality of elementary
sentences would give complete knowledge of the world. Objects have purely
internal properties; they are unaffected by one another, and contain all possi-
bilities of entering into combinations. This logical atomism continues Russell’s
trajectory against Bradley’s holism. Each state of affairs is independent of all
others, and no inferences are possible from one to another. Wittgenstein gives
no examples of simple things in the Tractatus; in his notebooks of 1914–1916,
he wonders whether they might be like points of light or the particles of atomic
physics (Wedberg, 1984: 166)—much in the same way that Russell vacillated
as to the nature of his reals. In effect they are Wittgenstein’s effort to postulate
what the world is like before or “below” the making of propositions about it.
The simples are not merely the ground level of an empirical reduction; they
are possibilities in logical space out of which all combinations can be generated,
beyond the changing configurations of mere experience.
Although Wittgenstein’s system has the flavor of reductionism, it is an
ontological hierarchy. The place of logic in the system is empty but nevertheless
central. The new Fregean method of logic is the key ingredient which Wittgen-
stein had inherited, and it cuts in a different direction than the program of
reduction to ultimate simples. Wittgenstein expresses this conflict by displaying
logic as deriving from tautologies (in the case of logical truths) and contradic-
tions (in the case of falsities). True logical propositions are known without our
knowing the truth of their components; “it is raining or it is not raining” is
true, regardless of the facts. Wittgenstein’s technical contribution in logic was
to work out a method of truth tables, based on the work of Russell’s friend
Sheffer at Harvard, to show which combinations of propositions are tautolo-
gies, contradictions, or contingent statements about facts.
Wittgenstein’s most famous move occurs at the place where he criticizes
Russell’s tradition, and where he locates the deepest troubles for future phi-
losophers to work on. This is the distinction between what is sayable and what
can only be shown. One meaning of the unsayable is that the ultimate ontology
is arbitrary, a brute reality that cannot be further explained. Unsayability is
found on several levels. Absolutely simple objects, the ultimate constituents of
the world, cannot be described, a claim already implicit in Russell’s knowledge
by acquaintance. Wittgenstein expands knowledge by acquaintance to every
level of his ontology. At the level of propositions, what is displayed is the logical
form of reality, a picture corresponding in the arrangement of its parts to the
arrangement of states of affairs in the world. Wittgenstein asserts something
like an overarching Platonic realm of logical form, that which propositions
The Post-revolutionary Condition^ •^715