Wittgenstein Flies a Kite: A Story of Models of Wings and Models of the World by Susan G. Sterrett

From the Publisher

"In this historical narrative of ideas. Duke professor of philosophy Susan Sterrett reveals a story at the beginning of our modern fascination with the nature of language." The philosophy of language and experimental research in aeronautics made great leaps at about the same time in the early twentieth century. Strange as it may sound, this was no coincidence. Sterrett shows what Wittgenstein's glimpse of a solution to the problem of language in 1914 had to do with experimental models - which had been so crucial to the Wright brothers' solving the problem of flight.

Journal of the History of Philosophy

Wittgenstein Flies a Kite focuses on intellectual developments in philosophy, physics, aeronautics, and engineering in the years just prior to the First World War. Sterrett points out that certain thinkers were involved simultaneously in more than one of these fields, and argues for conceptual cross-pollination among them. In particular, she wishes to make a case for connections between the modeling of heavier-than-air flight and Wittgenstein's views in the Tractatus. [. . .]
. . . Sterrett's research, particularly into the relevant parts of the history of engineering, is detailed and thorough; and what she has uncovered about convergent thought in physics, engineering, and philosophy of science is fascinating. Her style can be engaging, especially in the historical sections, and is, I believe, accessible to intelligent lay readers. The book includes an excellent index and, as an appendix, a translation of Boltzmann's 1894 lecture on aeronautics. It should definitely be considered as a text for courses in the history and philosophy of technology or science, and as recommended reading for analytically-oriented students of the early Wittgenstein.

Publishers Weekly

While numerous critical studies have traced Wittgenstein's philosophy of language to his study of mathematics and logic under Bertrand Russell, Sterrett, professor of philosophy at Duke, bases this novel intellectual history on the assiduously researched and surprising idea that Wittgenstein's advances in logic and the philosophy of language were related to another early 20th-century invention: the airplane. Weaving together the history of ideas in fin-de-siecle Austria, Germany, England and the United States, Sterrett deftly demonstrates that Wittgenstein drew the inspiration for his groundbreaking Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1914) from theories of physics and of music. She traces his influences to physicists like Ludwig Boltzmann and Edgar Buckingham, as well as his own study of the gramophone and the sound waves it produced. Sterrett draws on Wittgenstein's early aeronautical research and experiences building kites, asserting that the philosopher of language used models of wings as a model of language. Much like scale models of propellers or other toys, he said, language represents facts as we perceive and imagine them. Although often mired in dense, labyrinthine prose, Sterrett's compelling history of ideas offers a new glimpse of this perennially difficult philosopher and his intellectual milieu. (Dec.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

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