Ludwig Wittgenstein
First published Fri Nov 8, 2002; substantive revision Fri May 22, 2009
Considered by some to be the greatest philosopher of the 20th century, Ludwig Wittgenstein played a central, if controversial, role in 20th-century analytic philosophy. He continues to influence current philosophical thought in topics as diverse as logic and language, perception and intention, ethics and religion, aesthetics and culture. There are two commonly recognized stages of Wittgenstein's thought — the early and the later — both of which are taken to be pivotal in their respective periods. The early Wittgenstein is epitomized in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. By showing the application of modern logic to metaphysics, via language, he provided new insights into the relations between world, thought and language and thereby into the nature of philosophy. It is the later Wittgenstein, mostly recognized in the Philosophical Investigations, who took the more revolutionary step in critiquing all of traditional philosophy including its climax in his own early work. The nature of his new philosophy is heralded as anti-systematic through and through, yet still conducive to genuine philosophical understanding of traditional problems.
1. Biographical Sketch
2. The Early Wittgenstein
2.1 Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
2.2 Sense and Nonsense
2.3 The Nature of Philosophy
2.4 Interpretative Problems
3. The Later Wittgenstein
3.1 Transition and Critique of Tractatus
3.2 Philosophical Investigations
3.3 Meaning as Use
3.4 Language-games and Family Resemblance
3.5 Rule-following
3.6 Private Language, Grammar and Form of Life
3.7 The Nature of Philosophy
3.8. After the Investigations
Bibliography
Other Internet Resources
Related Entries
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1. Biographical Sketch
Wittgenstein was born on April 26, 1889 in Vienna, Austria, to a wealthy industrial family, well-situated in intellectual and cultural Viennese circles. In 1908 he began his studies in aeronautical engineering at Manchester University where his interest in the philosophy of pure mathematics led him to Frege. Upon Frege's advice, in 1911 he went to Cambridge to study with Bertrand Russell. Russell wrote, upon meeting Wittgenstein: "An unknown German appeared … obstinate and perverse, but I think not stupid" (quoted by Monk 1990: 38f). Within one year, Russell was committed: "I shall certainly encourage him. Perhaps he will do great things … I love him and feel he will solve the problems I am too old to solve" (quoted by Monk 1990: 41). Russell's insight was accurate. Wittgenstein was idiosyncratic in his habits and way of life, yet profoundly acute in his philosophical sensitivity.
During his years in Cambridge, from 1911 to 1913, Wittgenstein conducted several conversations on philosophy and the foundations of logic with Russell, with whom he had an emotional and intense relationship, as well as with Moore and Keynes. He retreated to isolation in Norway, for months at a time, in order to ponder these philosophical problems and to work out their solutions. In 1913 he returned to Austria and in 1914, at the start of World War I (1914-1918), joined the Austrian army. He was taken captive in 1917 and spent the remaining months of the war at a prison camp. It was during the war that he wrote the notes and drafts of his first important work, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. After the war the book was published in German and translated into English.
In 1920 Wittgenstein, now divorced from philosophy (having, to his mind, solved all philosophical problems in the Tractatus), gave away his part of his family's fortune and pursued several "professions" (gardener, teacher, architect, etc.) in and around Vienna. It was only in 1929 that he returned to Cambridge to resume his philosophical vocation, after having been exposed to discussions on the philosophy of mathematics and science with members of the Vienna Circle. During these first years in Cambridge his conception of philosophy and its problems underwent dramatic changes that are recorded in several volumes of conversations, lecture notes, and letters (e.g., Ludwig Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, The Blue and Brown Books, Philosophical Grammar). Sometimes termed the ‘middle Wittgenstein’, this period heralds a rejection of dogmatic philosophy, including both traditional works and the Tractatus itself.
In the 1930s and 1940s Wittgenstein conducted seminars — notorious for problems in communication between teacher and students — at Cambridge, developing most of the ideas that he intended to publish in his second book, Philosophical Investigations. These included the turn from formal logic to ordinary language, novel reflections on psychology and mathematics, and a general skepticism concerning philosophy's pretensions. In 1945 he prepared the final manuscript of the Philosophical Investigations, but, at the last minute, withdrew it from publication (and only authorized its posthumous publication). For a few more years he continued his philosophical work, but this is marked by a rich development of, rather than a turn away from, his second phase. He traveled during this period to the United States and Ireland, and returned to Cambridge, where he was diagnosed with cancer. Legend has it that, at his death in 1951, his last words were "Tell them I've had a wonderful life" (Monk: 579).
2. The Early Wittgenstein
2.1 Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus was first published in German in 1921, and then translated — by C.K. Ogden, with F. P. Ramsey's help — and published in English in 1922. It was later re-translated by D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness. Coming out of Wittgenstein's Notebooks, written in 1914-16, and correspondence with Russell, Moore and Keynes, and showing Schopenhauerian and other cultural influences, it evolved as a continuation of and reaction to Russell and Frege's conceptions of logic and language. Bertrand Russell supplied an introduction to the book claiming that it "certainly deserves … to be considered an important event in the philosophical world." It is fascinating to note that Wittgenstein thought little of Russell's introduction, claiming that it was riddled with misunderstandings. Later interpretations have attempted to unearth the surprising tensions between the introduction and the rest of the book (or between Russell's reading of Wittgenstein and Wittgenstein's own self-assessment) — usually harping on Russell's appropriation of Wittgenstein for his own agenda.
The Tractatus's structure purports to be representative of its internal essence. It is constructed around seven basic propositions, numbered by the natural numbers 1-7, with all other paragraphs in the text numbered by decimal expansions so that, e.g., paragraph 1.1 is (supposed to be) a further elaboration on proposition 1, 1.22 is an elaboration of 1.2, and so on.
The seven basic propositions are:
Ogden translation Pears/McGuinness translation
1. The world is everything that is the case. The world is all that is the case.
2. What is the case, the fact, is the existence of atomic facts. What is the case — a fact — is the existence of states of affairs.
3. The logical picture of the facts is the thought. A logical picture of facts is a thought.
4. The thought is the significant proposition. A thought is a proposition with sense.
5. Propositions are truth-functions of elementary propositions. A proposition is a truth-function of elementary propositions.
(An elementary proposition is a truth function of itself.) (An elementary proposition is a truth function of itself.)
6. The general form of truth-function is [p, ξ, N(ξ)]. The general form of a truth-function is [p, ξ, N(ξ)].
This is the general form of proposition. This is the general form of a proposition.
7. Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.
Clearly, the book addresses the central problems of philosophy which deal with the world, thought and language, and presents a "solution" (as Wittgenstein terms it) of these problems which is grounded in logic and in the nature of representation. The world is represented by thought, which is a proposition with sense, since they all — world, thought, and proposition — share the same logical form. Hence, the thought and the proposition can be pictures of the facts.
Starting with a seeming metaphysics, Wittgenstein sees the world as consisting of facts (1), rather than the traditional, atomistic conception of a world made up of objects. Facts are existent states of affairs (2) and states of affairs, in turn, are combinations of objects. Objects can fit together in various determinate ways. They may have various properties and may hold diverse relations to one another. Objects combine with one another according to their logical, internal properties. That is to say, an object's internal properties determine the possibilities of its combination with other objects; this is its logical form. Thus, states of affairs, being comprised of objects in combination, are inherently complex. The states of affairs which do exist could have been otherwise. This means that states of affairs are either actual (existent) or possible. It is the totality of states of affairs — actual and possible — that makes up the whole of reality. The world is precisely those states of affairs which do exist.
The move to thought, and thereafter to language, is perpetrated with the use of Wittgenstein's famous idea that thoughts, and propositions, are pictures — "the picture is a model of reality" (TLP 2.12). Pictures are made up of elements that together constitute the picture. Each element represents an object, and the combination of objects in the picture represents the combination of objects in a state of affairs. The logical structure of the picture, whether in thought or in language, is isomorphic with the logical structure of the state of affairs which it pictures. More subtle is Wittgenstein's insight that the possibility of this structure being shared by the picture (the thought, the proposition) and the state of affairs is the pictorial form. "That is how a picture is attached to reality; it reaches right out to it" (TLP 2.1511). This leads to an understanding of what the picture can picture; but also what it cannot — its own pictorial form.
While "the logical picture of the facts is the thought" (3), in the move to language Wittgenstein continues to investigate the possibilities of significance for propositions (4). Logical analysis, in the spirit of Frege and Russell, guides the work, with Wittgenstein using the logical calculus to carry out the construction of his system. Explaining that "Only the proposition has sense; only in the context of a proposition has a name meaning" (TLP 3.3), he provides the reader with the two conditions for sensical language. First, the structure of the proposition must conform with the constraints of logical form, and second, the elements of the proposition must have reference (bedeutung). These conditions have far-reaching implications. The analysis must culminate with a name being a primitive symbol, and this is manifested by the very abstract character of both names and (simple) objects. Moreover, logic itself gives us the structure and limits of what can be said at all.
Logic is based on the idea that every proposition is either true or false. This bi-polarity of propositions enables the composition of more complex propositions from atomic ones by using truth-functional operators (5). Wittgenstein supplies, in the Tractatus, the first presentation of Frege's logic in the form of what has become known as ‘truth-tables'. This provides the means to go back and analyze all propositions into their atomic parts, since "every statement about complexes can be analyzed into a statement about their constituent parts, and into those propositions which completely describe the complexes" (TLP 2.0201). He delves even deeper by then providing the general form of a proposition (6). This form, [p, ξ, N(ξ)], makes use of one formal operation (N(ξ)) and one propositional variable (p) to represent Wittgenstein's claim that any proposition "is the result of successive applications" of logical operations to elementary propositions.
Having developed this analysis of world-thought-language, and relying on the one general form of the proposition, Wittgenstein can now assert that all meaningful propositions are of equal value. Subsequently, he ends the journey with the admonition concerning what can (or cannot), and what should (or should not) be said (7), leaving outside the realm of the sayable propositions of ethics, aesthetics, and metaphysics.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Urban Social Processes
Urban Forms, Urban Processes, and Urban Policies: Toward a new conceptual framework and a new research agenda for metropolis in the 21st century
Daniel Z. Sui
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Outline:
1. Metropolis in the 21st Century: Toward a new conceptual framework for future research
1.1 Urban Forms: Technopolis, Ecumenopolis, Anthropopolis
1.2 Urban Processes: Macro (societal), Meso (institutional), Micro (individual)
1.3 Urban Policies: Economic Efficiency, Environmental Sustainability, Social Equity
2. Comments on the three proposed conference themes
2.1. Spatial Technologies and Accessibility
2.2. Accessibility and the Truly Disadvantaged
2.3. GIS and the modeling of new cities
It is a general consensus among social scientists that a technological revolution of historic proportion is dramatically transforming all the fundamental dimensions of human society. Technological impacts on the spatial forms and dynamics of cities all over the world can serve as the quintessential example for this technological revolution. Yet the recent literature is full of conflicting arguments and untested speculations about the effects of these technologies on urban societies. Although similar conference and projects have been conducted before (Brotchie et al., 1985, 1987; 1991), I believe that the proposed Baltimore conference is timely and much needed as some broader theoretical issues have not been thoroughly discussed and some of the technological advances were not anticipated. The following are some of my research notes prepared for the Baltimore conference. My primary intention here is to present an outline for a new conceptual framework and discuss a preliminary research agenda related to the three conference themes. The new conceptual framework proposed here is a synthesis of existing theoretical frameworks with a very strong flavor of theoretical pluralism. It is just a rough outline at this moment. Hopefully, I can further elaborate this framework based upon the feedback from the participants of this conference. Empirical evidence from my on-going research on Texas cities will be provided at the conference.
1. Metropolis in the 21st Century: Toward a new synthesis of conceptual frameworks
The voluminous recent urban literature on world cities, especially North American cities, is replete with assertions that a major reorganization of the spatial structure of cities is underway. A series of distinctive new urban forms is emerging from a complex interplay among social, economic, political and cultural forces. It has been argued that these new forms are characterized by the continued decentralization of both population and employment, the increasing levels of social diversity and spatial polarization, the emergence of an elite inner city (gentrification), and the deepening spatial separation between jobs and labor (spatial mismatch). These new urban forms have been attributed to the various societal, institutional, and individual decision making processes. Numerous policy proposals have been made for various different development scenarios for cities in the 21st century, ranging from going back to the pedestrian-based more compact urban form to stimulate the development of completely footloose electropolis.
In order to weave all these different aspects of urban studies into a coherent research agenda, we need to develop and articulate a new, eclectic, and inclusive conceptual framework. I believe that the new theoretical framework should have three integral components: 1). It should enable us to describe the new emerging urban forms in more comprehensive ways; 2). It should empower us to explain the underlying processes contributing to the emerging new urban forms; 3). It should offer us new insights to prescribe effective urban policies to redirect the underlying processes to promote the most desirable urban forms.
1.1 Urban Forms: A metropolis in the 21st century will be a tale of three different, but interrelated, cities. The specific urban forms will be determined by the interplay of the following three components:
A. Technopolis: Indeed, new world making always starts with the new word making. Scholars have used a variety of different names to refer to this emerging technopolis, ranging from electropolis and wired cities to city of bits, computational city to virtual and on-line community. Technopolis, narrowly defined, refers to the constellation of massive transportation, telecommunications, and information networks to move goods, people, and information; it is a combination of wheels, wires, and air waves. Technopolis, especially the city of bits, or the on-line virtual community, has attracted lots of attention in recent years, but our knowledge of the wired cities remain to be futuristic prophecies as presented in Mitchell's City of Bits. Concerted research efforts are needed for this emerging new urban form. The three themes of this conference may serve as an excellent start for us to gain more knowledge of this emerging new urban form.
B. Ecumonopolis, also known as sustainable city or ecological city. Daunting urban environmental problems have made the urban community to rethink of its slash/burn policies in the past. The development of Ecumenopolis, with the goal of seeking harmony of human being with their surrounding urban natural environment, has increasingly become an integral part of urban policy for urban development all over the world. The technopolis should be developed in harmony with urban natural environment and ultimately to become an ecumenopolis.
C. Anthropopolis. The central component of metropolis of the future will be the people residing the cities. To make future cities to become anthropopolis is to make future metropolis to become truly the city of/for people. The concept of anthropopolis emphasizes the satisfaction of human needs and the quality of urban life as the ultimate goal for all the future endeavors. We should strive the make the technopolis and ecumenopolis to serve this goal. Transportation networks, communication networks, and natural environmental should be designed in the way to stimulate the kind of life we would like to live (Do we know for sure?). The goal of developing an anthropopolis is to make all human activities, i.e., where we work, where we live and shop; and where we go to entertain ourselves, as enjoyable as we can. The telecommunication and computer technologies have played an increasingly important roles in all these activities, and yet we are not sure to what extent they are substitutive, complementary or synergistic to traditional means of conducting these activities.
With these three interrelated metropolis in mind, we should make concerted research efforts on the optimal urban forms for the cities in the next millennium. Do we want the relentless urban sprawl to continue, as facilitated by the development of new transportation, communication, and information technologies? Or should we go back to a more compact pedestrian-oriented urban forms as proposed by some leading urban planners in order to better fulfill the ideal sense of community, sustainability, and social equity?
1.2 Urban Processes: The processes contributing to the formations of urban forms are extraordinarily complex, and numerous different theoretical perspectives have been developed during the past two decades to explain these diverse urban processes. I believe that the new urban process theory should take a more holistic approach to synthesize these diverse approaches. The hierarchical theory I am proposing can be broken down into the following three levels:
A. Micro level processes: This is the individual level process using a behavioral approach from theories and concepts of neo-classical economics. Most traditional urban modeling efforts follow into this category.
B. Meso level processes: At this intermediate level, attentions should be paid to the roles and behaviors of various institutions in both private and public sectors. We need to examine how various institutions have shaped urban development trajectory and thus result in different urban forms.
C. Macro level processes: At this level, we should bring the general societal trends into consideration, putting urban development into perspectives of political economy, economic transformation, long wave rhythms, and world systems.
1.3: Urban Policies: I believe the future policy goals should strive to achieve balance of the following objectives:
A. Economic Efficiency: To develop policies to intervene at the individual, institutional, and societal levels to make the technopolis the most economically efficient at both the intra and inter-urban levels to facilitate the flows of goods, people, and information.
B. Environmental Sustainability: To develop policies to intervene at the individual, institutional, and societal levels to make the ecumenopolis the most environmentally sustainable, with plenty of safe water, clean air, and diversified natural habitat.
C. Social Equity: To develop policies to intervene at the individual, institutional, and societal levels to make the anthropopolis truly socially equitable so that the metropolis will become a city for everybody, with equal access to all different kinds of information and services and equal share of environmental burdens.
2. Comments on the three conference themes
2.1. Spatial Technologies and Accessibility
If spatial technologies, as defined in the call for papers for this conference, include new transportation networks, comunication, and information technologies, then the concept of accessibility needs to be redefined both conceptually and operationally. Presently, most measures of accessibility are distance-based, exclusively for the transportation networks. With ubiquitous availability of various communication and information technologies, traditional measures of accessibility may no longer apply. Because of the complexities in the spatial configurations of the new communication and information technology, the accessibility has become more elusive and fluid; thus it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to measure. We need new concepts and measurements to describe the spatial effects of new communication and information technology.
The second point I want to make is: we need to define access to what? Traditionally, we are concerned with access to jobs and services, now more with information. How should we measure people's access to information and to extent the access to information is measurable? We also need to differentiate the physical accessibility (via physical transportation/comunication networks) vs. social accessibility (via various institutional and interpersonal networks). Recent works in the social science literature has revealed that physical accessibility won't succeed unless it is hooked to the right social networks.
The conjectured changes in urban accessibility brought about by the increasingly widespread use of communication and information technologies in the literature remain to be speculations without a sound conceptual justification, not to mention about the urban land use changes at different geographic scales in response to the changes in access brought about by modern spatial technologies. Empirical studies are also lacking in examining the relationships between transportation and communication, to what extent they are substitutive, complementary, or synergistic in affecting the new urban development? The first step to achieve a satisfactory answer to these questions is to conduct an inventory of communication and information infrastructure. We have detailed road maps, but we do not have a thorough knowledge on the telecommunication/information network maps. Maybe we need a project Alexandria II to map out the distribution of various telecommunication and computer networks. Without a complete inventory of telecommunication and information infrastructures, our knowledge of accessibility will remain to be partial and speculative.
2.2 Accessibility and the Truly Disadvantaged
It is common knowledge now that the emerging information society is witnessing an increasing polarization between the haves and the have-nots, and the information-rich and the information-poor. Geographically, those disadvantaged population are predominantly trapped in inner cities and various suburban pocket locations. But the formation of the new underclass or the truly disadvantaged is a complex process. Lack of accessibility is one factor, but some social science studies have revealed that the formation of urban underclass is more than an accessibility issue. At the this moment, we do not know to what extent the accessibility has contributed to their status compared to other factors, such as education, segregation, and discrimination, etc. Some recent empirical work indicated that more access to information may not necessarily mean a better life for them, which should prompt us to consider both positive and negative effects of information on the lives of urban residents.
2.3. GIS and the modeling of new cities
With the recognition that GIS technology so far is more successful as a data inventory and information management tool rather as a spatial analytical and modeling tool, the GIS community, in collaboration with quantitative geographers, regional scientists, and modelers from various substantive fields, has made concerted efforts to integrate GIS with sophisticated analytical and modeling techniques. Numerous technical breakthroughs have been accomplished during the past five years. However, as far as the GIS-based urban modeling is concerned, I would say that GIS remains to be an improved means for unimproved ends. The models that have been implemented using GIS are conceptually still those developed during the 60s and 70s, i.e. various modified versions of Lowry-Garin model, shift-share analysis, mathematical programming techniques, etc. Although they may be useful under certain circumstances, few, if any, has confessed the cardinal sins of those urban models and discussed ways to reconceptualize them to capture the new dynamics of urban reality. Simply implementing a Lowry model using ARC/INFO doesn't add any substance to the model itself.
Undoubtedly, GIS will continue to play a very important role in modeling the new cities and stimulate new representations of urban reality. New urban realities demand new urban conceptual models. Maybe the outline I presented in this note can serve as a guideline for the design of new urban models: to incorporate the processes at the individual, institutional, and societal levels to achieve the goals of economic efficiency, environmental Sustainability, and social equity for metropolis of 21st century in which the technopolis, ecumonopolis, and anthropopolis are syngergistically and artfully integrated.
Last, but not least, I would like to emphasize that our future research efforts be tied more closely to urban policies. There are have been growing disparity between what we purport to describe and manipulate using sophisticated theoretical and methodological frameworks in virtual reality and our ability to say anything really meaningful about what actually happens in urban reality. Just as Gunnar Olsson put it so aptly 20 years ago: "what the analysis yielded was not more knowledge of the phenomena the model was speaking about: what it revealed was instead the hidden structure the model was speaking within." The new research agenda must strike a balance between the sophistication of our techniques/methods and the real world phenomena we are talking about. We need new frameworks, new models, new concepts, but we must strive to translate these new structures and models into meaningful policies and languages that society can appreciate and understand. Rigorous conceptual frameworks should be coupled with meticulous empirical analysis and realistic policy implications. Otherwise, our research efforts may become another self-indulging academic exercise.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Daniel Sui
Texas A&M University
Department of Geography
College Station, TX 77843-3147
Phone: (409) 845-7141
FAX: (409) 862-4487
D-Sui@tamu.edu
Daniel Z. Sui
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Outline:
1. Metropolis in the 21st Century: Toward a new conceptual framework for future research
1.1 Urban Forms: Technopolis, Ecumenopolis, Anthropopolis
1.2 Urban Processes: Macro (societal), Meso (institutional), Micro (individual)
1.3 Urban Policies: Economic Efficiency, Environmental Sustainability, Social Equity
2. Comments on the three proposed conference themes
2.1. Spatial Technologies and Accessibility
2.2. Accessibility and the Truly Disadvantaged
2.3. GIS and the modeling of new cities
It is a general consensus among social scientists that a technological revolution of historic proportion is dramatically transforming all the fundamental dimensions of human society. Technological impacts on the spatial forms and dynamics of cities all over the world can serve as the quintessential example for this technological revolution. Yet the recent literature is full of conflicting arguments and untested speculations about the effects of these technologies on urban societies. Although similar conference and projects have been conducted before (Brotchie et al., 1985, 1987; 1991), I believe that the proposed Baltimore conference is timely and much needed as some broader theoretical issues have not been thoroughly discussed and some of the technological advances were not anticipated. The following are some of my research notes prepared for the Baltimore conference. My primary intention here is to present an outline for a new conceptual framework and discuss a preliminary research agenda related to the three conference themes. The new conceptual framework proposed here is a synthesis of existing theoretical frameworks with a very strong flavor of theoretical pluralism. It is just a rough outline at this moment. Hopefully, I can further elaborate this framework based upon the feedback from the participants of this conference. Empirical evidence from my on-going research on Texas cities will be provided at the conference.
1. Metropolis in the 21st Century: Toward a new synthesis of conceptual frameworks
The voluminous recent urban literature on world cities, especially North American cities, is replete with assertions that a major reorganization of the spatial structure of cities is underway. A series of distinctive new urban forms is emerging from a complex interplay among social, economic, political and cultural forces. It has been argued that these new forms are characterized by the continued decentralization of both population and employment, the increasing levels of social diversity and spatial polarization, the emergence of an elite inner city (gentrification), and the deepening spatial separation between jobs and labor (spatial mismatch). These new urban forms have been attributed to the various societal, institutional, and individual decision making processes. Numerous policy proposals have been made for various different development scenarios for cities in the 21st century, ranging from going back to the pedestrian-based more compact urban form to stimulate the development of completely footloose electropolis.
In order to weave all these different aspects of urban studies into a coherent research agenda, we need to develop and articulate a new, eclectic, and inclusive conceptual framework. I believe that the new theoretical framework should have three integral components: 1). It should enable us to describe the new emerging urban forms in more comprehensive ways; 2). It should empower us to explain the underlying processes contributing to the emerging new urban forms; 3). It should offer us new insights to prescribe effective urban policies to redirect the underlying processes to promote the most desirable urban forms.
1.1 Urban Forms: A metropolis in the 21st century will be a tale of three different, but interrelated, cities. The specific urban forms will be determined by the interplay of the following three components:
A. Technopolis: Indeed, new world making always starts with the new word making. Scholars have used a variety of different names to refer to this emerging technopolis, ranging from electropolis and wired cities to city of bits, computational city to virtual and on-line community. Technopolis, narrowly defined, refers to the constellation of massive transportation, telecommunications, and information networks to move goods, people, and information; it is a combination of wheels, wires, and air waves. Technopolis, especially the city of bits, or the on-line virtual community, has attracted lots of attention in recent years, but our knowledge of the wired cities remain to be futuristic prophecies as presented in Mitchell's City of Bits. Concerted research efforts are needed for this emerging new urban form. The three themes of this conference may serve as an excellent start for us to gain more knowledge of this emerging new urban form.
B. Ecumonopolis, also known as sustainable city or ecological city. Daunting urban environmental problems have made the urban community to rethink of its slash/burn policies in the past. The development of Ecumenopolis, with the goal of seeking harmony of human being with their surrounding urban natural environment, has increasingly become an integral part of urban policy for urban development all over the world. The technopolis should be developed in harmony with urban natural environment and ultimately to become an ecumenopolis.
C. Anthropopolis. The central component of metropolis of the future will be the people residing the cities. To make future cities to become anthropopolis is to make future metropolis to become truly the city of/for people. The concept of anthropopolis emphasizes the satisfaction of human needs and the quality of urban life as the ultimate goal for all the future endeavors. We should strive the make the technopolis and ecumenopolis to serve this goal. Transportation networks, communication networks, and natural environmental should be designed in the way to stimulate the kind of life we would like to live (Do we know for sure?). The goal of developing an anthropopolis is to make all human activities, i.e., where we work, where we live and shop; and where we go to entertain ourselves, as enjoyable as we can. The telecommunication and computer technologies have played an increasingly important roles in all these activities, and yet we are not sure to what extent they are substitutive, complementary or synergistic to traditional means of conducting these activities.
With these three interrelated metropolis in mind, we should make concerted research efforts on the optimal urban forms for the cities in the next millennium. Do we want the relentless urban sprawl to continue, as facilitated by the development of new transportation, communication, and information technologies? Or should we go back to a more compact pedestrian-oriented urban forms as proposed by some leading urban planners in order to better fulfill the ideal sense of community, sustainability, and social equity?
1.2 Urban Processes: The processes contributing to the formations of urban forms are extraordinarily complex, and numerous different theoretical perspectives have been developed during the past two decades to explain these diverse urban processes. I believe that the new urban process theory should take a more holistic approach to synthesize these diverse approaches. The hierarchical theory I am proposing can be broken down into the following three levels:
A. Micro level processes: This is the individual level process using a behavioral approach from theories and concepts of neo-classical economics. Most traditional urban modeling efforts follow into this category.
B. Meso level processes: At this intermediate level, attentions should be paid to the roles and behaviors of various institutions in both private and public sectors. We need to examine how various institutions have shaped urban development trajectory and thus result in different urban forms.
C. Macro level processes: At this level, we should bring the general societal trends into consideration, putting urban development into perspectives of political economy, economic transformation, long wave rhythms, and world systems.
1.3: Urban Policies: I believe the future policy goals should strive to achieve balance of the following objectives:
A. Economic Efficiency: To develop policies to intervene at the individual, institutional, and societal levels to make the technopolis the most economically efficient at both the intra and inter-urban levels to facilitate the flows of goods, people, and information.
B. Environmental Sustainability: To develop policies to intervene at the individual, institutional, and societal levels to make the ecumenopolis the most environmentally sustainable, with plenty of safe water, clean air, and diversified natural habitat.
C. Social Equity: To develop policies to intervene at the individual, institutional, and societal levels to make the anthropopolis truly socially equitable so that the metropolis will become a city for everybody, with equal access to all different kinds of information and services and equal share of environmental burdens.
2. Comments on the three conference themes
2.1. Spatial Technologies and Accessibility
If spatial technologies, as defined in the call for papers for this conference, include new transportation networks, comunication, and information technologies, then the concept of accessibility needs to be redefined both conceptually and operationally. Presently, most measures of accessibility are distance-based, exclusively for the transportation networks. With ubiquitous availability of various communication and information technologies, traditional measures of accessibility may no longer apply. Because of the complexities in the spatial configurations of the new communication and information technology, the accessibility has become more elusive and fluid; thus it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to measure. We need new concepts and measurements to describe the spatial effects of new communication and information technology.
The second point I want to make is: we need to define access to what? Traditionally, we are concerned with access to jobs and services, now more with information. How should we measure people's access to information and to extent the access to information is measurable? We also need to differentiate the physical accessibility (via physical transportation/comunication networks) vs. social accessibility (via various institutional and interpersonal networks). Recent works in the social science literature has revealed that physical accessibility won't succeed unless it is hooked to the right social networks.
The conjectured changes in urban accessibility brought about by the increasingly widespread use of communication and information technologies in the literature remain to be speculations without a sound conceptual justification, not to mention about the urban land use changes at different geographic scales in response to the changes in access brought about by modern spatial technologies. Empirical studies are also lacking in examining the relationships between transportation and communication, to what extent they are substitutive, complementary, or synergistic in affecting the new urban development? The first step to achieve a satisfactory answer to these questions is to conduct an inventory of communication and information infrastructure. We have detailed road maps, but we do not have a thorough knowledge on the telecommunication/information network maps. Maybe we need a project Alexandria II to map out the distribution of various telecommunication and computer networks. Without a complete inventory of telecommunication and information infrastructures, our knowledge of accessibility will remain to be partial and speculative.
2.2 Accessibility and the Truly Disadvantaged
It is common knowledge now that the emerging information society is witnessing an increasing polarization between the haves and the have-nots, and the information-rich and the information-poor. Geographically, those disadvantaged population are predominantly trapped in inner cities and various suburban pocket locations. But the formation of the new underclass or the truly disadvantaged is a complex process. Lack of accessibility is one factor, but some social science studies have revealed that the formation of urban underclass is more than an accessibility issue. At the this moment, we do not know to what extent the accessibility has contributed to their status compared to other factors, such as education, segregation, and discrimination, etc. Some recent empirical work indicated that more access to information may not necessarily mean a better life for them, which should prompt us to consider both positive and negative effects of information on the lives of urban residents.
2.3. GIS and the modeling of new cities
With the recognition that GIS technology so far is more successful as a data inventory and information management tool rather as a spatial analytical and modeling tool, the GIS community, in collaboration with quantitative geographers, regional scientists, and modelers from various substantive fields, has made concerted efforts to integrate GIS with sophisticated analytical and modeling techniques. Numerous technical breakthroughs have been accomplished during the past five years. However, as far as the GIS-based urban modeling is concerned, I would say that GIS remains to be an improved means for unimproved ends. The models that have been implemented using GIS are conceptually still those developed during the 60s and 70s, i.e. various modified versions of Lowry-Garin model, shift-share analysis, mathematical programming techniques, etc. Although they may be useful under certain circumstances, few, if any, has confessed the cardinal sins of those urban models and discussed ways to reconceptualize them to capture the new dynamics of urban reality. Simply implementing a Lowry model using ARC/INFO doesn't add any substance to the model itself.
Undoubtedly, GIS will continue to play a very important role in modeling the new cities and stimulate new representations of urban reality. New urban realities demand new urban conceptual models. Maybe the outline I presented in this note can serve as a guideline for the design of new urban models: to incorporate the processes at the individual, institutional, and societal levels to achieve the goals of economic efficiency, environmental Sustainability, and social equity for metropolis of 21st century in which the technopolis, ecumonopolis, and anthropopolis are syngergistically and artfully integrated.
Last, but not least, I would like to emphasize that our future research efforts be tied more closely to urban policies. There are have been growing disparity between what we purport to describe and manipulate using sophisticated theoretical and methodological frameworks in virtual reality and our ability to say anything really meaningful about what actually happens in urban reality. Just as Gunnar Olsson put it so aptly 20 years ago: "what the analysis yielded was not more knowledge of the phenomena the model was speaking about: what it revealed was instead the hidden structure the model was speaking within." The new research agenda must strike a balance between the sophistication of our techniques/methods and the real world phenomena we are talking about. We need new frameworks, new models, new concepts, but we must strive to translate these new structures and models into meaningful policies and languages that society can appreciate and understand. Rigorous conceptual frameworks should be coupled with meticulous empirical analysis and realistic policy implications. Otherwise, our research efforts may become another self-indulging academic exercise.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Daniel Sui
Texas A&M University
Department of Geography
College Station, TX 77843-3147
Phone: (409) 845-7141
FAX: (409) 862-4487
D-Sui@tamu.edu
Social Theory
History
[edit] Pre-classical social theorists
Prior to 19th century, social theory took largely narrative and normative traits. Expressed in story form, it both assumed ethical principles and recommended moral acts. Thus one can regard religious figures as the earliest social theorists.
Saint Augustine (354 - 430) and St. Thomas Aquinas (circa 1225 - 1274) concerned themselves exclusively with a just society. St. Augustine describes late Ancient Roman society but through a lens of hatred and contempt for what he saw as false Gods, and in reaction theorized The City of God. Similarly, in China, Master Kong (otherwise known as Confucius) (551 - 479 BCE) envisaged a just society that went beyond his contemporary society of the Warring States. Later on, also in China, Mozi (circa 470 - circa 390 BCE) recommended a more pragmatic sociology, but ethical at base.
In the 18th century, after Montesquieu's The Spirit of Law established that social elements influences human nature, pre-classical period of social theories have changed to a new form that provide the basic ideas for social theory. Such as: evolution, philosophy of history, social life and social contract, public and general will, competition in social space, organistic pattern for social description and ... Jean-Jacques Rousseau in this time played a significant role in social theory. He revealed the origin of inequality, analyzed the social contract(and social compact) that forms social integration and defined the social sphere or civil society. He also emphasized that man has the liberty to change his world, a revolutionary assertion that made it possible to program and change society.
[edit] Classical social theory
The first “modern” social theories (known as classical theories) that begin to resemble the analytic social theory of today developed almost simultaneously with the birth of the science of sociology. Auguste Comte (1798 - 1857), known as the 'father of sociology', laid the groundwork for one of the first social theories - social evolutionism. In the 19th century three great classical theories of social and historical change emerged: the social evolutionism theory (of which Social Darwinism forms a part), the social cycle theory and the Marxist historical materialism theory.
Another early modern theorist, Herbert Spencer (1820 - 1903), coined the term "survival of the fittest" (and incidentally recommended avoidance of governmental action on behalf of the poor). Some Post-Modern social theorists like Shepard Humphries, draw heavily upon Spencer's work and argue that many of his observations are timeless (just as relevant in 2008 as 1898). Vilfredo Pareto (1848 - 1923) and Pitirim A. Sorokin argued that 'history goes in cycles', and presented the social cycle theory to illustrate their point. Ferdinand Tönnies (1855 - 1936) made community and society (Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, 1887) the special topics of the new science of "sociology", both of them based on different modes of will of social actors. Emile Durkheim postulated a number of major theories regarding anomie and functionalism. Max Weber theorized on bureaucracy, religion, and authority. Karl Marx theorized on the class struggle and social progress towards communism and laid the groundwork for the theory that became known as Marxism. Marxism became more than a theory, of course, carrying deep implications over the course of 20th century history (including the Russian Revolution of 1917).
Most of the 19th century pioneers of social theory and sociology, like Saint-Simon, Comte, Marx, John Stuart Mill or Spencer, never held university posts. Most people regarded them as philosophers, because much of the their thinking was interdisciplinary and "outside the box" of the existing disciplines of their time (eg:, philology, law, and history).
Many of the classical theories had one common factor: they all agreed that the history of humanity is pursuing a certain fixed path. They differed on where that path would lead: social progress, technological progress, decline or even fall, etc. Social cycle theorists were much more skeptical of the Western achievements and technological progress, however, arguing that progress is but an illusion in of the ups and downs of the historical cycles. The classical approach has been criticized by many modern sociologists and theorists, among them Karl Popper, Robert Nisbet, Charles Tilly and Immanuel Wallerstein.
[edit] Pre-classical social theorists
Prior to 19th century, social theory took largely narrative and normative traits. Expressed in story form, it both assumed ethical principles and recommended moral acts. Thus one can regard religious figures as the earliest social theorists.
Saint Augustine (354 - 430) and St. Thomas Aquinas (circa 1225 - 1274) concerned themselves exclusively with a just society. St. Augustine describes late Ancient Roman society but through a lens of hatred and contempt for what he saw as false Gods, and in reaction theorized The City of God. Similarly, in China, Master Kong (otherwise known as Confucius) (551 - 479 BCE) envisaged a just society that went beyond his contemporary society of the Warring States. Later on, also in China, Mozi (circa 470 - circa 390 BCE) recommended a more pragmatic sociology, but ethical at base.
In the 18th century, after Montesquieu's The Spirit of Law established that social elements influences human nature, pre-classical period of social theories have changed to a new form that provide the basic ideas for social theory. Such as: evolution, philosophy of history, social life and social contract, public and general will, competition in social space, organistic pattern for social description and ... Jean-Jacques Rousseau in this time played a significant role in social theory. He revealed the origin of inequality, analyzed the social contract(and social compact) that forms social integration and defined the social sphere or civil society. He also emphasized that man has the liberty to change his world, a revolutionary assertion that made it possible to program and change society.
[edit] Classical social theory
The first “modern” social theories (known as classical theories) that begin to resemble the analytic social theory of today developed almost simultaneously with the birth of the science of sociology. Auguste Comte (1798 - 1857), known as the 'father of sociology', laid the groundwork for one of the first social theories - social evolutionism. In the 19th century three great classical theories of social and historical change emerged: the social evolutionism theory (of which Social Darwinism forms a part), the social cycle theory and the Marxist historical materialism theory.
Another early modern theorist, Herbert Spencer (1820 - 1903), coined the term "survival of the fittest" (and incidentally recommended avoidance of governmental action on behalf of the poor). Some Post-Modern social theorists like Shepard Humphries, draw heavily upon Spencer's work and argue that many of his observations are timeless (just as relevant in 2008 as 1898). Vilfredo Pareto (1848 - 1923) and Pitirim A. Sorokin argued that 'history goes in cycles', and presented the social cycle theory to illustrate their point. Ferdinand Tönnies (1855 - 1936) made community and society (Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, 1887) the special topics of the new science of "sociology", both of them based on different modes of will of social actors. Emile Durkheim postulated a number of major theories regarding anomie and functionalism. Max Weber theorized on bureaucracy, religion, and authority. Karl Marx theorized on the class struggle and social progress towards communism and laid the groundwork for the theory that became known as Marxism. Marxism became more than a theory, of course, carrying deep implications over the course of 20th century history (including the Russian Revolution of 1917).
Most of the 19th century pioneers of social theory and sociology, like Saint-Simon, Comte, Marx, John Stuart Mill or Spencer, never held university posts. Most people regarded them as philosophers, because much of the their thinking was interdisciplinary and "outside the box" of the existing disciplines of their time (eg:, philology, law, and history).
Many of the classical theories had one common factor: they all agreed that the history of humanity is pursuing a certain fixed path. They differed on where that path would lead: social progress, technological progress, decline or even fall, etc. Social cycle theorists were much more skeptical of the Western achievements and technological progress, however, arguing that progress is but an illusion in of the ups and downs of the historical cycles. The classical approach has been criticized by many modern sociologists and theorists, among them Karl Popper, Robert Nisbet, Charles Tilly and Immanuel Wallerstein.
Wittgenstein
Born: 26 April 1889 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 29 April 1951 in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England
Ludwig Wittgenstein's father was Karl Wittgenstein who was Jewish while his mother was a Roman Catholic. Ludwig was baptised into the Catholic Church. His parents were both very musical and Ludwig was brought up in a home which was always filled with music, Brahms being a frequent guest. Ludwig's parents had eight children who were all highly gifted both artistically and intellectually. There were three girls, Gretl, Hermine, and Helene, and five boys Hans, Kurt, Rudolf, Paul, and Ludwig. The family were wealthy industrialists having made a fortune in the steel industry and, being one of the wealthiest families in Austria, they were able to provide the best possible education for their children.
Perhaps at this stage we should make some comments on Ludwig's brothers and sisters for it will help to understand something of Ludwig's lifestyle as he grew up and also what he went through. Three of the boys, Hans, Kurt, and Rudolf, all committed suicide later in their lives. Paul was a talented pianist who lost an arm during World War I. Ravel composed Concerto for the Left Hand for him. Gretl had her portrait painted by Gustav Klimt, the great Austrian Art Nouveau painter. Hermine wrote an important article on Wittgenstein which is published in [16] and from which we give some quotes.
Ludwig was the youngest of the children and he was educated at home until he was fourteen years of age. He showed an interest in mechanical things as he grew up and when he was ten years old he made a working sewing machine. In 1903 Wittgenstein began three years of schooling at the Realschule in Linz, Austria, which specialised in mathematics and natural science. Coming from a cultured background into a school filled with working class children gave Wittgenstein a difficult and unhappy time. He did not understand his fellow pupils and to them he seemed [16]:-
... like a being from another world.
How could they be expected to understand the frail shy boy who spoke with a stammer, and whose father was one of the richest men in Austria? The school enhanced Wittgenstein's love of technology, however, and made him decide to study engineering at university. In 1906 he went to Berlin where began his studies in mechanical engineering at the Technische Hochschule in Charlottenburg. Intending to study for his doctorate in engineering, Wittgenstein went to England in 1908 and registered as a research student in an engineering laboratory of the University of Manchester.
His first project involved the study of the behaviour of kites in the upper atmosphere of the earth. He moved from this to further study of aeronautical research, this time examining the design of a propeller with a small jet engine on the end of each blade. At this stage Wittgenstein was much more practically minded than one might suppose, given his later highly theoretical work, and he not only studied the theoretical design of the propeller but he actually built and tested it.
The tests of the propeller were successful but, needing to understand more mathematics for his research, he began a study which soon involved him in the foundations of mathematics. Russell had published his Principles of Mathematics in 1903 and Wittgenstein turned to this work as he sought a better understanding of foundations of his subject. He became so interested in Russell's work that he decided that he wanted to learn more. Wittgenstein travelled to Jena to ask Frege's advice and was told that he should study under Russell.
Wittgenstein left his aeronautical research in Manchester in 1911 to study mathematical logic with Russell in Trinity College, Cambridge. Russell was not one to be easily impressed by a student, but he was certainly very impressed by Wittgenstein. Russell wrote that teaching Wittgenstein was:-
... one of the most exciting intellectual adventures [of my life]. ... [Wittgenstein had] fire and penetration and intellectual purity to a quite extraordinary degree. ... [He] soon knew all that I had to teach.
Russell also wrote [14]:-
His disposition is that of an artist, intuitive and moody. He says every morning he begins his work with hope, and every evening he ends in despair.
By 1912 Russell had become convinced that Wittgenstein possessed a genius which should be directed towards mathematical philosophy. He therefore persuaded Wittgenstein to give up any ideas that he still had to resume his applied mathematical work on aeronautics.
The first paper that Wittgenstein presented was to the Cambridge Philosophical Society in 1912. Entitled What is philosophy it [12]:-
... shows that from the very beginning Wittgenstein recognised the importance of understanding the nature of philosophical problems and of reflecting on the appropriate methods for approaching them.
During this period at Cambridge, Wittgenstein continued to work on the foundations of mathematics and also on mathematical logic. He suffered depression, however, and threatened suicide on a number of occasions. He found Cambridge a less than ideal place to work since he felt that the academics there were merely trying to be clever in their discussions while their ideas lacked depth. When he told Russell that he wanted to leave Cambridge and go to Norway, Russell tried to dissuade him [14]:-
I said it would be dark, and he said he hated daylight. I said it would be lonely, and he said he prostituted his mind talking to intelligent people. I said he was mad, and he said God preserve him from sanity. (God certainly will.)
Despite Russell's attempts to stop him, Wittgenstein went to Skjolden in Norway and this proved an extremely fruitful period during which lived in isolation working on his ideas on logic and language that would form the basis of his great work the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. It was also a period when he continued to suffer depression. His letters to Hermine spoke of his mental torment (see [16]) and she wrote that during this time he lived:-
... in a heightened state of intellectual intensity, which verged on the pathological.
When World War I broke out in 1914 Wittgenstein immediately travelled from Skjolden to Vienna to join the Austrian army. He was keen to enlist since he wanted to face death [16]:-
Now I should have the chance to be a decent human being, for I'm standing eye to eye with death.
He served first on a ship then in an artillery workshop but he found his fellow soldiers very difficult as they subjected him to cruelty. In 1916 he was sent as a member of a howitzer regiment to the Russian front where he gained many distinctions for bravery. In 1918 he was sent to north Italy in an artillery regiment and he was there at the end of the war, becoming a prisoner of the Italians in Cassino. During these four years of active service Wittgenstein had written his great work in logic, the Tractatus, and the manuscript was found in his rucksack when he was taken prisoner. He was allowed to send the manuscript to Russell while he was held in a prison camp in Italy.
Having written what he believed was his final word on philosophy, Wittgenstein's intention was now to give up his study of the subject. Released from detention in 1919, he gave away the family fortune he had inherited and, in the following year, trained as a primary school teacher in Austria. He was trained in the methods of the Austrian School Reform Movement, which believed that the main aim of a teacher was to arouse a child's curiosity and to help the child develop as an independent thinker. The Movement rejected the method of teaching which encouraged children to simply learn to repeat facts. But although Wittgenstein was a strong believer in these principles and tried with great enthusiasm to provide the children that he taught in the mountain village of Wiener Neustadt with the best possible education, there were factors working against his success. Perhaps the biggest difficulty that Wittgenstein faced was that giving away the family fortune did nothing to enable someone with his highly privileged background to fit into the culture of the children of farmers who he taught.
During this period Wittgenstein was again desperately unhappy and came close to committing suicide on a number of occasions. The thought that he was appreciated by the children kept him at his task, but he found difficulties in keeping relations between himself and the other teachers on a friendly basis. Eventually, feeling largely that he had failed as a primary school teacher, Wittgenstein gave up in 1925. He still did not feel that he wanted to return to an academic life so he worked at a number of different jobs. First he worked as a gardener's assistant in the Hüsseldorf monastery near Vienna, living in the tool-shed for three months. Then he worked as an architect for two years occupied in the design and construction of a mansion house for his sister Gretl near Vienna.
Although Wittgenstein had not wished to return to academic life during this period he was not completely isolated from the study of mathematical logic, the foundations of mathematics, and philosophy. He met with Ramsey, who was making a special study of the Tractatus and had travelled from Cambridge to Austria on several occasions to have discussions with him, and he also met with philosophers from the Vienna Circle. There have been many theories put forward to explain why he returned to academic life, but at the heart of it must be that in the discussions he had, he came to see problems with the Tractatus.
In 1929 Wittgenstein returned to Cambridge where he submitted the Tractatus as his doctoral thesis. This work considers the relationship of language to the world. Words, Wittgenstein argued, were representations of objects and combining words led to propositions which were statements about reality, or as he says, pictures of reality. Such statements, of course, may picture a reality which is true or false. Conversely, the world as presented by Wittgenstein in the Tractatus, consists of facts. These facts can be broken down into states of affair, which in turn can be broken down into combinations of objects. This is essentially an atomic theory with the world built from simple objects. He argues that there is a bijection (one-one correspondence) between language and the world.
In the Preface to Philosophical Investigations written sixteen years after he returned to Cambridge, Wittgenstein wrote:-
... since beginning to occupy myself with philosophy again, sixteen years ago, I have been forced to recognise grave mistakes in what I wrote in that first book. I was helped to realise these mistakes - to a degree which I myself am hardly able to estimate - by the criticism which my ideas encountered from Frank Ramsey, with whom I discussed them in innumerable conversations during the last two years of his life.
However, it was not until 1953, two years after Wittgenstein's death, that this second great work Philosophical Investigations was published. In this work Wittgenstein studied [12]:-
... the philosophy of language and philosophical psychology. ... the form of the book is quite unique. ... we first get a part of 693 distinct, numbered remarks, varying in length from one line to several paragraphs, and a second part of fourteen sections, half a page to thirty-six pages long ... instead of presenting arguments and clearly stated conclusions, these remarks reflect on a wide range of topics without ever producing a clear final statement on any of them.
How does his approach in the Philosophical Investigations differ from that in the Tractatus ? He is still concerned with language, but in his later thinking words are not unvarying representations of objects, but rather are diverse. He draws an analogy between words and tools in a tool-box:-
... there is a hammer, pliers, a saw, a screw-driver, a ruler, a glue-pot, nails and screws. The function of words are as diverse as the functions of these objects.
It was not that a words had a meaning, rather it had a use. Another illustration that he gives is an analogy between words and pieces in a chess game. The meaning of a chess piece is not determined by its physical appearance, rather it is determined by the rules of chess. Similarly the meaning of a word is its use governed by rules.
After the award of his doctorate, Wittgenstein was appointed a lecturer at Cambridge and he was made a fellow of Trinity College. In the following years Wittgenstein lectured there on logic, language, and the philosophy of mathematics. He was appointed to the chair in philosophy at Cambridge in 1939. Malcolm, a student of Wittgenstein, writes in [10] about Wittgenstein's lectures which he attended in 1939:-
His lectures were given without preparation and without notes. He told me once that he tried to lecture from notes but was disgusted with the result; the thoughts that came out were 'stale', or, as he put it to another friend, the words looked like 'corpses' when he began to read them. In the methods that he came to use, his only preparation for the lecture, as he told me, was to spend a few minutes before the class met, recollecting the course that the inquiry had taken at the previous meeting. At the beginning of the lecture he would give a brief summary of this and then he would start from there, trying to advance the investigation with fresh thoughts. ... [W]hat occurred in these class meetings was largely new research.
G H von Wright was a pupil of Wittgenstein at Cambridge. He writes [10]:-
Wittgenstein thought that his influence as a teacher was, on the whole, harmful to the development of independent minds in his disciples. I am afraid that he was right. And I believe that I can partly understand why it should be so. Because of the depth and originality of his thinking, it is very difficult to understand Wittgenstein's ideas and even more difficult t incorporate them into one's own thinking. At the same time the magic of his personality and style was most inviting and persuasive. to learn from Wittgenstein without coming to adopt his forms of expression and catchwords and even to imitate his tone of voice, his mien and gestures was almost impossible.
There is a suggestion here that Wittgenstein would never have fitted in as the leader of a large group of students and researchers. Although he did have students who went on produce important work, yet remain true to his way of thinking, Wittgenstein always seemed an isolated figure. He seemed to understand the reasons for this when he wrote:-
Am I the only one who cannot found a school or can a philosopher never do this? I cannot found a school because I do not really want to be imitated. Not at any rate by those who publish articles in philosophy journals.
Wittgenstein remained at Cambridge until he resigned in 1947 except for the period of World War II during which he worked as a hospital porter in Guy's Hospital in London. He also spent time working as a laboratory assistant in the Royal Victoria Infirmary before returning to his duties at Cambridge in 1944. After three years back at Cambridge he retired and moved to an isolated cottage on the west coast of Ireland. His health deteriorated and in 1949 cancer was diagnosed. Wittgenstein did not seem unhappy at the diagnosis since he said that he did not wish to live any longer. He continued to work on his ideas until a few days before his death, the power and depth of his intellect being undiminished by illness.
McGinn, in [12], gives a fair estimate of Wittgenstein:-
The power and originality of his thought show a unique philosophical mind and many would be happy to call him a genius.
Wittgenstein was never happy with his own writings and as a result only the one major work, the Tractatus, was published during his life. A wealth of material from his lectures and notes has subsequently been published. That his ideas are found difficult is something that he was well aware of and he felt that in some way he did not fit into the world in which he lived. Let us end with a quote from his own writing about why ideas are found difficult:-
Why is philosophy so complicated? It ought to be entirely simple. Philosophy unties the knots in our thinking that we have, in a senseless way, put there. To do this it must make movements that are just as complicated as these knots. Although the result of philosophy is simple, its method cannot be if it is to succeed. The complexity of philosophy is not a complexity of its subject matter, but of our knotted understanding.
Died: 29 April 1951 in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England
Ludwig Wittgenstein's father was Karl Wittgenstein who was Jewish while his mother was a Roman Catholic. Ludwig was baptised into the Catholic Church. His parents were both very musical and Ludwig was brought up in a home which was always filled with music, Brahms being a frequent guest. Ludwig's parents had eight children who were all highly gifted both artistically and intellectually. There were three girls, Gretl, Hermine, and Helene, and five boys Hans, Kurt, Rudolf, Paul, and Ludwig. The family were wealthy industrialists having made a fortune in the steel industry and, being one of the wealthiest families in Austria, they were able to provide the best possible education for their children.
Perhaps at this stage we should make some comments on Ludwig's brothers and sisters for it will help to understand something of Ludwig's lifestyle as he grew up and also what he went through. Three of the boys, Hans, Kurt, and Rudolf, all committed suicide later in their lives. Paul was a talented pianist who lost an arm during World War I. Ravel composed Concerto for the Left Hand for him. Gretl had her portrait painted by Gustav Klimt, the great Austrian Art Nouveau painter. Hermine wrote an important article on Wittgenstein which is published in [16] and from which we give some quotes.
Ludwig was the youngest of the children and he was educated at home until he was fourteen years of age. He showed an interest in mechanical things as he grew up and when he was ten years old he made a working sewing machine. In 1903 Wittgenstein began three years of schooling at the Realschule in Linz, Austria, which specialised in mathematics and natural science. Coming from a cultured background into a school filled with working class children gave Wittgenstein a difficult and unhappy time. He did not understand his fellow pupils and to them he seemed [16]:-
... like a being from another world.
How could they be expected to understand the frail shy boy who spoke with a stammer, and whose father was one of the richest men in Austria? The school enhanced Wittgenstein's love of technology, however, and made him decide to study engineering at university. In 1906 he went to Berlin where began his studies in mechanical engineering at the Technische Hochschule in Charlottenburg. Intending to study for his doctorate in engineering, Wittgenstein went to England in 1908 and registered as a research student in an engineering laboratory of the University of Manchester.
His first project involved the study of the behaviour of kites in the upper atmosphere of the earth. He moved from this to further study of aeronautical research, this time examining the design of a propeller with a small jet engine on the end of each blade. At this stage Wittgenstein was much more practically minded than one might suppose, given his later highly theoretical work, and he not only studied the theoretical design of the propeller but he actually built and tested it.
The tests of the propeller were successful but, needing to understand more mathematics for his research, he began a study which soon involved him in the foundations of mathematics. Russell had published his Principles of Mathematics in 1903 and Wittgenstein turned to this work as he sought a better understanding of foundations of his subject. He became so interested in Russell's work that he decided that he wanted to learn more. Wittgenstein travelled to Jena to ask Frege's advice and was told that he should study under Russell.
Wittgenstein left his aeronautical research in Manchester in 1911 to study mathematical logic with Russell in Trinity College, Cambridge. Russell was not one to be easily impressed by a student, but he was certainly very impressed by Wittgenstein. Russell wrote that teaching Wittgenstein was:-
... one of the most exciting intellectual adventures [of my life]. ... [Wittgenstein had] fire and penetration and intellectual purity to a quite extraordinary degree. ... [He] soon knew all that I had to teach.
Russell also wrote [14]:-
His disposition is that of an artist, intuitive and moody. He says every morning he begins his work with hope, and every evening he ends in despair.
By 1912 Russell had become convinced that Wittgenstein possessed a genius which should be directed towards mathematical philosophy. He therefore persuaded Wittgenstein to give up any ideas that he still had to resume his applied mathematical work on aeronautics.
The first paper that Wittgenstein presented was to the Cambridge Philosophical Society in 1912. Entitled What is philosophy it [12]:-
... shows that from the very beginning Wittgenstein recognised the importance of understanding the nature of philosophical problems and of reflecting on the appropriate methods for approaching them.
During this period at Cambridge, Wittgenstein continued to work on the foundations of mathematics and also on mathematical logic. He suffered depression, however, and threatened suicide on a number of occasions. He found Cambridge a less than ideal place to work since he felt that the academics there were merely trying to be clever in their discussions while their ideas lacked depth. When he told Russell that he wanted to leave Cambridge and go to Norway, Russell tried to dissuade him [14]:-
I said it would be dark, and he said he hated daylight. I said it would be lonely, and he said he prostituted his mind talking to intelligent people. I said he was mad, and he said God preserve him from sanity. (God certainly will.)
Despite Russell's attempts to stop him, Wittgenstein went to Skjolden in Norway and this proved an extremely fruitful period during which lived in isolation working on his ideas on logic and language that would form the basis of his great work the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. It was also a period when he continued to suffer depression. His letters to Hermine spoke of his mental torment (see [16]) and she wrote that during this time he lived:-
... in a heightened state of intellectual intensity, which verged on the pathological.
When World War I broke out in 1914 Wittgenstein immediately travelled from Skjolden to Vienna to join the Austrian army. He was keen to enlist since he wanted to face death [16]:-
Now I should have the chance to be a decent human being, for I'm standing eye to eye with death.
He served first on a ship then in an artillery workshop but he found his fellow soldiers very difficult as they subjected him to cruelty. In 1916 he was sent as a member of a howitzer regiment to the Russian front where he gained many distinctions for bravery. In 1918 he was sent to north Italy in an artillery regiment and he was there at the end of the war, becoming a prisoner of the Italians in Cassino. During these four years of active service Wittgenstein had written his great work in logic, the Tractatus, and the manuscript was found in his rucksack when he was taken prisoner. He was allowed to send the manuscript to Russell while he was held in a prison camp in Italy.
Having written what he believed was his final word on philosophy, Wittgenstein's intention was now to give up his study of the subject. Released from detention in 1919, he gave away the family fortune he had inherited and, in the following year, trained as a primary school teacher in Austria. He was trained in the methods of the Austrian School Reform Movement, which believed that the main aim of a teacher was to arouse a child's curiosity and to help the child develop as an independent thinker. The Movement rejected the method of teaching which encouraged children to simply learn to repeat facts. But although Wittgenstein was a strong believer in these principles and tried with great enthusiasm to provide the children that he taught in the mountain village of Wiener Neustadt with the best possible education, there were factors working against his success. Perhaps the biggest difficulty that Wittgenstein faced was that giving away the family fortune did nothing to enable someone with his highly privileged background to fit into the culture of the children of farmers who he taught.
During this period Wittgenstein was again desperately unhappy and came close to committing suicide on a number of occasions. The thought that he was appreciated by the children kept him at his task, but he found difficulties in keeping relations between himself and the other teachers on a friendly basis. Eventually, feeling largely that he had failed as a primary school teacher, Wittgenstein gave up in 1925. He still did not feel that he wanted to return to an academic life so he worked at a number of different jobs. First he worked as a gardener's assistant in the Hüsseldorf monastery near Vienna, living in the tool-shed for three months. Then he worked as an architect for two years occupied in the design and construction of a mansion house for his sister Gretl near Vienna.
Although Wittgenstein had not wished to return to academic life during this period he was not completely isolated from the study of mathematical logic, the foundations of mathematics, and philosophy. He met with Ramsey, who was making a special study of the Tractatus and had travelled from Cambridge to Austria on several occasions to have discussions with him, and he also met with philosophers from the Vienna Circle. There have been many theories put forward to explain why he returned to academic life, but at the heart of it must be that in the discussions he had, he came to see problems with the Tractatus.
In 1929 Wittgenstein returned to Cambridge where he submitted the Tractatus as his doctoral thesis. This work considers the relationship of language to the world. Words, Wittgenstein argued, were representations of objects and combining words led to propositions which were statements about reality, or as he says, pictures of reality. Such statements, of course, may picture a reality which is true or false. Conversely, the world as presented by Wittgenstein in the Tractatus, consists of facts. These facts can be broken down into states of affair, which in turn can be broken down into combinations of objects. This is essentially an atomic theory with the world built from simple objects. He argues that there is a bijection (one-one correspondence) between language and the world.
In the Preface to Philosophical Investigations written sixteen years after he returned to Cambridge, Wittgenstein wrote:-
... since beginning to occupy myself with philosophy again, sixteen years ago, I have been forced to recognise grave mistakes in what I wrote in that first book. I was helped to realise these mistakes - to a degree which I myself am hardly able to estimate - by the criticism which my ideas encountered from Frank Ramsey, with whom I discussed them in innumerable conversations during the last two years of his life.
However, it was not until 1953, two years after Wittgenstein's death, that this second great work Philosophical Investigations was published. In this work Wittgenstein studied [12]:-
... the philosophy of language and philosophical psychology. ... the form of the book is quite unique. ... we first get a part of 693 distinct, numbered remarks, varying in length from one line to several paragraphs, and a second part of fourteen sections, half a page to thirty-six pages long ... instead of presenting arguments and clearly stated conclusions, these remarks reflect on a wide range of topics without ever producing a clear final statement on any of them.
How does his approach in the Philosophical Investigations differ from that in the Tractatus ? He is still concerned with language, but in his later thinking words are not unvarying representations of objects, but rather are diverse. He draws an analogy between words and tools in a tool-box:-
... there is a hammer, pliers, a saw, a screw-driver, a ruler, a glue-pot, nails and screws. The function of words are as diverse as the functions of these objects.
It was not that a words had a meaning, rather it had a use. Another illustration that he gives is an analogy between words and pieces in a chess game. The meaning of a chess piece is not determined by its physical appearance, rather it is determined by the rules of chess. Similarly the meaning of a word is its use governed by rules.
After the award of his doctorate, Wittgenstein was appointed a lecturer at Cambridge and he was made a fellow of Trinity College. In the following years Wittgenstein lectured there on logic, language, and the philosophy of mathematics. He was appointed to the chair in philosophy at Cambridge in 1939. Malcolm, a student of Wittgenstein, writes in [10] about Wittgenstein's lectures which he attended in 1939:-
His lectures were given without preparation and without notes. He told me once that he tried to lecture from notes but was disgusted with the result; the thoughts that came out were 'stale', or, as he put it to another friend, the words looked like 'corpses' when he began to read them. In the methods that he came to use, his only preparation for the lecture, as he told me, was to spend a few minutes before the class met, recollecting the course that the inquiry had taken at the previous meeting. At the beginning of the lecture he would give a brief summary of this and then he would start from there, trying to advance the investigation with fresh thoughts. ... [W]hat occurred in these class meetings was largely new research.
G H von Wright was a pupil of Wittgenstein at Cambridge. He writes [10]:-
Wittgenstein thought that his influence as a teacher was, on the whole, harmful to the development of independent minds in his disciples. I am afraid that he was right. And I believe that I can partly understand why it should be so. Because of the depth and originality of his thinking, it is very difficult to understand Wittgenstein's ideas and even more difficult t incorporate them into one's own thinking. At the same time the magic of his personality and style was most inviting and persuasive. to learn from Wittgenstein without coming to adopt his forms of expression and catchwords and even to imitate his tone of voice, his mien and gestures was almost impossible.
There is a suggestion here that Wittgenstein would never have fitted in as the leader of a large group of students and researchers. Although he did have students who went on produce important work, yet remain true to his way of thinking, Wittgenstein always seemed an isolated figure. He seemed to understand the reasons for this when he wrote:-
Am I the only one who cannot found a school or can a philosopher never do this? I cannot found a school because I do not really want to be imitated. Not at any rate by those who publish articles in philosophy journals.
Wittgenstein remained at Cambridge until he resigned in 1947 except for the period of World War II during which he worked as a hospital porter in Guy's Hospital in London. He also spent time working as a laboratory assistant in the Royal Victoria Infirmary before returning to his duties at Cambridge in 1944. After three years back at Cambridge he retired and moved to an isolated cottage on the west coast of Ireland. His health deteriorated and in 1949 cancer was diagnosed. Wittgenstein did not seem unhappy at the diagnosis since he said that he did not wish to live any longer. He continued to work on his ideas until a few days before his death, the power and depth of his intellect being undiminished by illness.
McGinn, in [12], gives a fair estimate of Wittgenstein:-
The power and originality of his thought show a unique philosophical mind and many would be happy to call him a genius.
Wittgenstein was never happy with his own writings and as a result only the one major work, the Tractatus, was published during his life. A wealth of material from his lectures and notes has subsequently been published. That his ideas are found difficult is something that he was well aware of and he felt that in some way he did not fit into the world in which he lived. Let us end with a quote from his own writing about why ideas are found difficult:-
Why is philosophy so complicated? It ought to be entirely simple. Philosophy unties the knots in our thinking that we have, in a senseless way, put there. To do this it must make movements that are just as complicated as these knots. Although the result of philosophy is simple, its method cannot be if it is to succeed. The complexity of philosophy is not a complexity of its subject matter, but of our knotted understanding.
Urban Social Processes
Title: The role of social networks in employment processes in urban China
Authors: Huang, Xianbi
Issue Date: 2006
Abstract: The central theme of this dissertation is that social networks play an important role in employment processes in reform-era urban China. Three dimensions of this role are investigated, including the relative efficacy of social networks as compared to other job search channels, social resources transmitted through social networks, and the effect of social networks on labor market outcomes. Based on in-depth interviews and case studies in Chinese cities, an institutional framework has been developed to formulate hypotheses about the first two dimensions, and a job matching model is proposed to study empirical implications of the third dimension. Quantitative analyses of Chinese five-city survey data show that social networks have a significant effect in helping job applicants to obtain jobs in economic sectors of varying ownership forms and institutional arrangements. Furthermore, the impact of social networks on finding soft-skill jobs is remarkable; compared to the technical jobs, the communication and service jobs are more possible to be obtained via social networks. In addition, as a type of resource transmitted through social networks, influence presents a significant effect in finding jobs located in different institutional spheres than information does. As proved in the job matching model, social networks that are employed by job seekers and by prospective employers, respectively, tend to enhance job matches and have significant effects on other labor market outcomes.
Description: Thesis (Ph.D.)--Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2006
x, 145 leaves : ill. ; 30 cm
HKUST Call Number: Thesis SOSC 2006 Huang
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/1783.1/2702
Authors: Huang, Xianbi
Issue Date: 2006
Abstract: The central theme of this dissertation is that social networks play an important role in employment processes in reform-era urban China. Three dimensions of this role are investigated, including the relative efficacy of social networks as compared to other job search channels, social resources transmitted through social networks, and the effect of social networks on labor market outcomes. Based on in-depth interviews and case studies in Chinese cities, an institutional framework has been developed to formulate hypotheses about the first two dimensions, and a job matching model is proposed to study empirical implications of the third dimension. Quantitative analyses of Chinese five-city survey data show that social networks have a significant effect in helping job applicants to obtain jobs in economic sectors of varying ownership forms and institutional arrangements. Furthermore, the impact of social networks on finding soft-skill jobs is remarkable; compared to the technical jobs, the communication and service jobs are more possible to be obtained via social networks. In addition, as a type of resource transmitted through social networks, influence presents a significant effect in finding jobs located in different institutional spheres than information does. As proved in the job matching model, social networks that are employed by job seekers and by prospective employers, respectively, tend to enhance job matches and have significant effects on other labor market outcomes.
Description: Thesis (Ph.D.)--Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2006
x, 145 leaves : ill. ; 30 cm
HKUST Call Number: Thesis SOSC 2006 Huang
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/1783.1/2702
Social Theory
Social theory is the use of theoretical frameworks to study and interpret social structures and phenomena within a particular school of thought.
An essential tool used by scholars in the analysis of society, social theories are interdisciplinary, drawing ideas from and contributing to such disciplines as anthropology, economics, history, human geography, literary theory, mass communications, philosophy, sociology, and theology.
Тhe origins of social theory are difficult to pinpoint, but many arguments return to Ancient Greece. Berch Berberoglu cites Plato, Socrates and Aristotle as influencing social theory throughout the enlightenment up to the late nineteenth and early twentieth century (Berberoglu 2005, p. xi). "Critical" social theories, such as neomarxist theories and feminist theories, argue that because theories are generally based on premises that entail normative positions, it is necessary to critique the ideological aspects of theories and related oppressive social relations.
Social theory as a discipline
Harrington (2005) discusses the etymology of social theory, stating that while the term did not exist in any language before the twentieth century, its origins are ancient and lie in two words; ‘social’ from the Latin socius and ‘theory’ from the Greek theoria. Social theorising aided the Greeks in making sense of their lives, and in questioning the value and meaning of things around them.
Social theory as a distinct discipline emerged in the 20th century and was largely equated with an attitude of critical thinking, based on rationality, logic and objectivity, and the desire for knowledge through aposteriori methods of discovery, rather than apriori methods of tradition. With this in mind it is easy to link social theory to deeper seated philosophical discussions.
[edit] Social theory in relation to the natural sciences
Compared to disciplines within the objective natural sciences -- such as physics or chemistry -- social theorists may make less use of the scientific method, and their conclusions and data can be interpreted more subjectively. While standards of rigor do exist within quantitative social science methodologies, their precision is bounded by a degree of uncertainty inherent in human behavior. However, because experiments in the natural sciences are necessarily social artifacts, and social theory treats social artifacts as being constructed, social theorists posit that even experiments in the natural sciences and their concomitant results are social constructions. Social theories can complement research in the natural sciences and vice-versa.
The concept that social theory may supersede certain aspects of the natural sciences is called the social construction of reality. Social theory takes knowledge, the manner in which we acquire knowledge, and the institutions by which knowledge is reified and disseminated among a human collectivity to be socially constructed. In effect, the laws of nature can only be derived using social tools within a social context. According to social theory, the understanding of natural phenomena is predicated on the understanding of social phenomena, as the interpretation of natural phenomena is a social activity.
This interpretation of the natural sciences leads to some deeper epistemological questions. By questioning the methods by which we deem knowledge to be "objective," we necessarily put into question any scientific knowledge whatsoever. Social theory does not exist in mutual exclusion to the natural sciences; one is often complementary to the other. Rather, social theory calls for natural scientists to examine their methodologies with a critical eye by situating said methodologies within a social context.
An essential tool used by scholars in the analysis of society, social theories are interdisciplinary, drawing ideas from and contributing to such disciplines as anthropology, economics, history, human geography, literary theory, mass communications, philosophy, sociology, and theology.
Тhe origins of social theory are difficult to pinpoint, but many arguments return to Ancient Greece. Berch Berberoglu cites Plato, Socrates and Aristotle as influencing social theory throughout the enlightenment up to the late nineteenth and early twentieth century (Berberoglu 2005, p. xi). "Critical" social theories, such as neomarxist theories and feminist theories, argue that because theories are generally based on premises that entail normative positions, it is necessary to critique the ideological aspects of theories and related oppressive social relations.
Social theory as a discipline
Harrington (2005) discusses the etymology of social theory, stating that while the term did not exist in any language before the twentieth century, its origins are ancient and lie in two words; ‘social’ from the Latin socius and ‘theory’ from the Greek theoria. Social theorising aided the Greeks in making sense of their lives, and in questioning the value and meaning of things around them.
Social theory as a distinct discipline emerged in the 20th century and was largely equated with an attitude of critical thinking, based on rationality, logic and objectivity, and the desire for knowledge through aposteriori methods of discovery, rather than apriori methods of tradition. With this in mind it is easy to link social theory to deeper seated philosophical discussions.
[edit] Social theory in relation to the natural sciences
Compared to disciplines within the objective natural sciences -- such as physics or chemistry -- social theorists may make less use of the scientific method, and their conclusions and data can be interpreted more subjectively. While standards of rigor do exist within quantitative social science methodologies, their precision is bounded by a degree of uncertainty inherent in human behavior. However, because experiments in the natural sciences are necessarily social artifacts, and social theory treats social artifacts as being constructed, social theorists posit that even experiments in the natural sciences and their concomitant results are social constructions. Social theories can complement research in the natural sciences and vice-versa.
The concept that social theory may supersede certain aspects of the natural sciences is called the social construction of reality. Social theory takes knowledge, the manner in which we acquire knowledge, and the institutions by which knowledge is reified and disseminated among a human collectivity to be socially constructed. In effect, the laws of nature can only be derived using social tools within a social context. According to social theory, the understanding of natural phenomena is predicated on the understanding of social phenomena, as the interpretation of natural phenomena is a social activity.
This interpretation of the natural sciences leads to some deeper epistemological questions. By questioning the methods by which we deem knowledge to be "objective," we necessarily put into question any scientific knowledge whatsoever. Social theory does not exist in mutual exclusion to the natural sciences; one is often complementary to the other. Rather, social theory calls for natural scientists to examine their methodologies with a critical eye by situating said methodologies within a social context.
THESE ARE MY NEW CLASSES THAT I AM GOING TO TAKE THIS SEMESTER
Social Theory
Urban Social Processes
Wittgenstein
Urban Social Processes
Wittgenstein
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