My interest in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (‘TLP’) goes back to 1973 …

when I was a new undergraduate at Sussex studying Biology. At the time the idea of cybernetics, switches and Boolean algebra were in vogue when looking at gene function. An idle moment in the University bookshop found me at the philosophy section and I picked up the TLP attracted by its title. Its terse aphoristic style rang a chord with me and I bought a copy. That week I read through into the ‘3s’ and got thoroughly lost. I gave up on it.

From time to time over a long career in commerce I tried to re-engage with it, but with difficulty because to understand it (and that itself might be the wrong way of putting it) one has to appreciate what Wittgenstein was arguing against, that is, the targets of his book: some of Frege’s and Russell’s ideas.

My retirement project of studying philosophy back at university gave me the chance to re-acquaint with this old but frustrating ‘friend’. Indeed, it is now at the centre of my philosophical focus. There is much to disagree with in its pages and there are also all the arguments about how the book should be read, but you get the feeling that at its kernel there is something rather precious that is worth striving for. The value comes from the effort. As in one of his later works, Philosophical Investigations, it is as if one is embarking on a life-long meditation. Perhaps that is why it is still so studied. The book seems immune to a puzzle-solving approach to understanding and, I think, asks us to accept the inner disquiet that can come from a philosophical koan.