“The World is the Totality of Facts, not of Things” (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 1.1.)

According to Wittgenstein, the logical structure of language should be introduced the structure of language. There are two main key objectives of Tractatus Logico-philosophicus. They are, 

-The nature of logic

-The connection between language and the world

According to him, there should be a particular structure to the world as there is a structure in logic. First he emphasized the nature of logic. He defines the structure of language through logic and through the structure of language; he expressed the nature of the world. In other words, he used language in order to state the structure of the world.   

Furthermore, according to Wittgenstein there are some major questions in Tractatus Logico- philosophicus, which makes the foundation of it. They can be stated as what is the nature of the world, does it has made from our own experiences etc. For that, language has a big impact. He says,

‘1. The world is everything that is the case’ (Wittgenstein, 1922, p. 31).

Wittgenstein places the world in between the things which can be seen and which can be heard. According to him, the world is empirical. However, there are limits, which limit the things we see and hear. Wittgenstein keep facts above things as things are not able to determine facts. He says, 

“1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things” (Wittgenstein, 1922, p. 31). 

A ‘Fact’ can be defined as the existence of things. But it should be proved with using evidences. In the introduction which was written by Bertrand Russell to Tractatus Logico philosophicus, has mentioned that,“The world consists of facts; facts cannot strictly speaking be defined, but we can explain what we mean by saying that facts are what make propositions true, or false. Facts may contain parts which are facts or may contain no such parts” (Wittgenstein, 1922, p. 11-12).

Russell’s view is bit similar with Wittgenstein. In other words facts can be defined as descriptive staements since they carry out proved statements. 

In the introduction Russel states that ‘the world is not described by merely naming all the objects in it; it is necessary also to know the atomic facts of which these objects are constituents’ (Wittgenstein, 1922, p. 12). According to him there are atomic propositions which can be inferred from propositions that are true or false. When there is a proposition which describes that the leaves are green, that should be taken as true proposition because of the fact the leaves are green. 

Wittgenstein has emphasized the world as the totality of facts regardless of the commonly accepted conventional things as objects. The commonly accepted idea was that the world is the totality of things as ojects. Those people believe that the wprld consists with external things that we could see. As pythogoras introduced a revolutionary idea which says that the world world consists with numbers and the world is the totality of numbers. As such the idea of Wittgenstein is also a revolutionary idea that is defined the world as the totlity of facts. Simply, as it is mentioned by wittgenstein the world is constructed through facts.facts are empirically proved things which are expressed through language. 

He states more claims on the nature of the world. He says, “1.13 The facts in logical space are the world” (Wittgenstein, 1922, p. 31). This view proves that Wittgenstein emphasized the nature of the world through logic and language. 

Witgenstein says, 

“2. What is the case, the fact, is the eistence of atomic facts” (Wittgenstein, 1922, p. 31).

There can be seen atomic facts which is considered as the simplest form of a fact. To illustrate, there can be seen simplest forms of factual evidences in the language. Atomic facts and states of affairs are similar terms. They are not emphasized much. Again he suggests that,“2.01 An atomic fact is a combination of objects (entities, things)” (Wittgenstein, 1922, p. 31).

According to Russell each fact consists of at least one universal. But as it is mentioned by Wittgenstein, states of affairs or atommic facts are combinations of objects. According to my point of view, Wittgenstein suggests that it is essential for the things to exist as a form of atomic facts. We name objects by using different terms. But until it applies to an object in a representative way, it becomes a fact, till we describe an object through language. 

“2.03 In the atomic fact objects hang one in another like the members of a chain” (Wittgenstein, 1922, p. 37).

This indicates that atomic facts or states of affairs are consisted with objects and not with propositions or relations. One could have doubted on the term ‘objects’ or states of affairs. The term ‘objects’ actually refer to the things exist in the ordinary world or what are the objects that create atomic facts or states of affairs. 

Furthermore, he states that, “The thing is independent, in so far as it occur in all possible circumstances, but this form of independence is a form of connexion with the atomic fact, a form of dependence” (Wittgenstein, 1922, p. 33).

Moreover, This states that things or objects can occur in different numbers of atomic facts or states of affairs. However, it is impossible for words to exist in different ways in a proposition.  

Wittgenstein defines the interconnection between objects and states of affairs. Here objects means the entities or things. He claims that, “2.02 The object is simple” (Wittgenstein, 1922, p. 35). According to Wittgenstein objects are not composed with the complex external objects. To illustrate, objects are simple as they are composed with individual entities. He came up with a logical argument in order to establish simple forms of objects in real. 

2.021 ‘Obejects form the substance of the world’. 

2.0211 'If the world has no substance, then whether a proposition had sense would depend on whether another proposition was true’.

2.0212 ‘It would then be impossible to form a picture of the world (true of false)’. (Wittgenstein, 1922, p. 35).

The essential thing is if simple objects do not exist, then it will be impossible to see the world through pictures of object in the world. As it is mentioned earlier until objects become and object in a representative way, it becomes a fact. 

Above mentioned all the things can be summerized as the metaphysical ideas of Wittgenstein, which had defined facts, atomic facts or states of affairs and objects with its interrelationship. But wen it comes to the main theses of tractatus, it can be defined as the connection between above mentioned metaphysical things and the world since the aim of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is to define the nature of the world through logical language. 

Wittgenstein states about the connection between states of affairs or atomic facts and the world itself. He says, ‘2.04 The totality of existent atomic facts is the world’ (Wittgenstein, 1922, p. 37).

According to him, the existence of the world can be defined through the existence of states of affairs. The whole world consists of the states of affairs. Wittgenstein suggests that,‘2.05 The totality of existent atomic facts also determines which atomic facts do not exist’ (Wittgenstein, 1922, p. 37).

To illustrate, there could be facts, which do not exist as atomic facts or states of affairs. But all those facts compose the world.

Moreover, Wittgenstein rejected three types of things that cannot be facts anymore. One is religious statements. He does not neither reject them nor accept them as true. He refused ethical statements, as they do not contain factual base. Aesthetic statements are also refused as things that cannot be facts anymore since they are subjective statements, which can lead to disagreements among people. 

In the last sentence of the book, Wittgenstein states that, 

“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent” (Wittgenstein, 1922, p. 189).

This means that if one cannot speak factually, then he should be silent. In conclusion, Wittgenstein says that the world consists of states of affairs or atomic facts and it could happen other way round as the world composed with states of affairs. 

Conclusion

Wittgenstein has done a great contribution towards analytical philosophy. He combined logic and language in order to define the nature of the world. Other than that first, his aim was to understand the limitations of thoughts and through the limitations of thought; he wanted to understand the structures of language. Mainly, his philosophy was a critical explanation of language. He rejected that the structure of reality or the world could be determined the structures of language. He states that the structures of language could construct the world. He suggested that every language has its own logical structure. 

In conclusion, Wittgenstein’s early philosophy can be described from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The essence of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus can be summarized as following. A fact can be defined as a collection of atomic facts or states of affairs. Atomic facts can be defined as combinations of objects. Combinations of atomic facts can be defined as the world, there could be many recombinations of those atomic facts, and it can be called as the change. 

Works Cited

Pears, D. (1971). Wittgenstein. Glasgow: William Collins Sons and Co. Ltd.

Wittgenstein, L. (1922). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, trubner & Co. Ltd.