TRACTATUS | TLP | SEL002 | LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN

|| PROPOSITION || #2 || 2 THRU 2.0141 ||

|| #2 || What is the case , the fact , is the existence of atomic facts .

|| 2.01 || An atomic fact is a combination of objects ( entities , things ) .

|| 2.011 || It is essential to a thing that it can be a constituent part of an atomic fact .

|| 2.012 || In logic nothing is accidental : if a thing can occur in an atomic fact the possibility of that atomic fact must already be prejudged in the thing .

|| 2.0121 || It would , so to speak , appear as an accident , when to a thing that could exist alone on its own account , subsequently a state of affairs could be made to fit .

If things can occur in atomic facts , this possibility must already lie in them .

( A logical entity cannot be merely possible . Logic treats of every possibility , and all possibilities are its facts . )

Just as we cannot think of spatial objects at all apart from space , or temporal objects apart from time , so we cannot think of any object apart from the possibility of its connexion with other things .

If I can think of an object in the context of an atomic fact , I cannot think of it apart from the possibility of this context .

|| 2.0122 || The thing is independent , in so far as it can occur in all possible circumstances , but this form of independence is a form of connexion with the atomic fact , a form of dependence . ( It is impossible for words to occur in two different ways , alone and in the proposition . )

|| 2.0123 || If I know an object , then I also know all the possibilities of its occurrence in atomic facts .

( Every such possibility must lie in the nature of the object . )

A new possibility cannot subsequently be found .

|| 2.01231 || In order to know an object , I must know not its external but all its internal qualities .

|| 2.0124 || If all objects are given , then thereby are all possible atomic facts also given .

|| 2.013 || Every thing is , as it were , in a space of possible atomic facts . I can think of this space as empty , but not of the thing without the space .

|| 2.0131 || A spatial object must lie in infinite space . ( A point in space is an argument place . )

A speck in a visual field need not be red , but it must have a colour ; it has , so to speak , a colour space round it . A tone must have a pitch , the object of the sense of touch a hardness etc .

|| 2.014 || Objects contain the possibility of all states of affairs .

|| 2.0141 || The possibility of its occurrence in atomic facts is the form of the object .

SOURCE | SATYAVEDISM.ORG