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World pt.1 - Observation: Paint It Scie Nce .Co M
World pt.1 - Observation: Paint It Scie Nce .Co M
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What is the world? We can f ind an apparently simple answer in the Tractatus Logico-philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein claims T he world is all that is the case which is clarif ied in proposition 1.12 T he world is the totality of f acts, not of things. Reality, theref ore, is an ef f ect of observation and language the medium in which the observation becomes sharable and thus part of a reality.
Observation and the way we look at things, not reality, become the most relevant f actor to whatever we understand as the world because by observing and f ocussing we actually create things. T hat said, we might think that it is probably not the best to start with the world, or as Luhmann writes:
Die Theorie beginnt () nicht mit einer Einheit, mit einer Kosmologie, mit einem Weltbegriff, mit einem Seinsbegriff oder dergleichen, sie beginnt mit einer Differenz. [Theory doesnt start with unity, with cosmology, with a conception of "world", with a conception of "being" and suchlike. It starts with a difference.]
Continued in part 2.