Tolle Lege!.

Within this book Wittgenstein shows that there is no structure to the world, in Heidegger's [b:Being and Time|92307|Being and Time|Martin Heidegger|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1298438455s/92307.jpg|1309352] he shows that there is a structure to the world. Each author considers an ontology (or lack there of) of the world from different perspectives. I think it's save to say that this book and Heidegger's could be considered the two most important books of the 20th century when we were in the 20th century. Oddly, both seem to be mostly ignored in the 21st century.

I listened to the free libre vox edition of this book, and I'm glad I did it that way. There were many logical expressions and tables presented in the book, but by listening instead of reading I got to get the point of what was being said and didn't have to spend an inordinate amount of time fully understanding the equations (and tables).

It's odd that Betrand Russell wrote such a flattering introduction to this version of the book. As I was listening, I realized the book is a refutation of [b:Principia Mathematica, Vol 1|6482515|Principia Mathematica, Vol 1|Bertrand Russell|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1436853066s/6482515.jpg|19129985]. I actually ended up pausing the book in order to see when Godel had done his incompleteness theorem and was shocked that this book came out 10 years before.

Wittgenstein makes some incredibly powerful arguments. He fully gets that one can't go from logic to mathematics and then to reality. He knows the traps that our language keeps us in. Logic (and mathematics) according to him must be tautologies (nothing is shown, just restated) or must be contradictions. The law of identity must be self evident or nonsensical.

I was surprised how much of Hegel's thought popped up in this book. He doesn't really cite Hegel much in the book, but he does cite Frege.

There is a whole lot of incredibly good argumentation within this short book. He's a really clear writer (except perhaps when I'm listening to the long logic expressions), and he gives some real marvelous memorable lines in the text.