This repository contains visualizations of the correspondence between Wittgenstein's posthumous works (edited by the Nachlass executors) and the sources in Wittgenstein's Nachlass. Visualizations for the Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics (RFM) are provided in the format A3, while more experimental visualizations of most of the remaining published works are provided in the format A2. All visualizations are provided as PDFs as well as the TeX files that were used to produce the PDFs. (Unfortunately it is not possible to publish the source code used to generate the TeX files, as it depends on the Nachlass XML data of the Wittgenstein Archives Bergen, which are not publicly released.)
The “works” of Wittgenstein that were published after his death by the three literary executors G.E.M. Anscombe, Rush Rhees and Georg Henrik von Wright have often been the target of criticism, giving rise to the question of what can even be considered a “work” by Wittgenstein. The Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics (RFM), first published in 1956 and then heavily revised and expanded in 1974, are certainly one of the most problematic publications in this regard, as the literary executors themselves pointed out:
The Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics occupy a nearly unique, and not altogether happy, position among the posthumous publications. In addition to the relatively finished Part I, corresponding to typescripts 222, 223, and 224 of the catalogue and constituting the second half of the pre-war version of the Investigations, the Remarks contain selections from several manuscripts (117, 121, 122, 124, 125, 126, and 127). In the revised edition of 1974 (English translation 1978) the selections from those manuscripts were somewhat enlarged and a further manuscript (164) which was not known to the editors at the time of the first edition was added, practically without omissions. A publication of the manuscripts in toto, however, seemed to us excluded even at the time of preparing the new edition. [von Wright, "Philosophical Occasions", 1993, p. 502]
The visualisations on the following pages present the editorial decisions described above for the RFM (in A3) and more experimentally for most of the remaining works (in A2), with one visualisation per part of a work. Each image shows three columns of remarks, ordered from top to bottom as they appear in the published work of the source documents. The remarks in the different columns are connected if they correspond to each other, either because a remark in the published work is identical (with minimal textual changes) to a remark in the source document or because a remark in a source document also appears in other related documents. The column on the left displays the remarks that are included in the published work, with diamond markers indicating the section boundaries in the work (and section numbers to the left). The column in the middle shows the remarks of one or several source documents (with page numbers to the right) that form the basis of the published work. The column on the right displays the remarks of secondary documents (with page numbers to the right) with textually similar remarks in the source document of the published work.
By displaying the connections from the published work (on the left) to the source documents (in the middle), the visualisation shows where the published work originates and which parts of the source document were reordered / excluded / inserted. By displaying the connection from the source document (in the middle) to the related documents (on the right), the visualisation can often hint at the reason why a particular segment was or was not published.
To the left of the vertical document lines (in the middle and right columns) appears a kind of bar code pattern of short horizontal lines with small or larger circle markers directly to the left. These lines and markers indicate that the remark is published in the work currently being visualised (indicated by a slightly larger circle marker) or is published in other works (either other parts of the work in question or other works, both indicated by a small circle marker).
Longer horizontal lines, both solid and densely dotted, which cross the document lines (in the middle and right columns) indicate a break between adjacent remarks in the document. Solid lines indicate a separating line by Wittgenstein himself, densely dotted lines indicate a chronological break of more than 30 days between remarks.