HENK VISSER

BOLTZMANN AND WITTGENSTEIN

OR HOW PICTURES BECAME LINGUISTIC

ABSTRACT. Emphasis in historiography of science is naturally placed on the discoveries

and inventions which scientists make and generally less on new methods of doing science,
but sometimes the latter can he an important clue to help us understand the former. For
example, while we all acknowledge how great the contributions of Maxwell, Boltzmann,
Planck, and Einstein were to physics from roughly 1870 to 1920, we often overlook the sig-
nificance of a methodological phrase which was popular during that same period, namely,
what in German was called “Bildtheorie” or in English “picture theory”. But even before
we can properly study its significance we have to know what the theory was, but even this
presents problems, since the meaning changed. In fact, this paper is an attempt not only to
describe the history of that change from Maxwell to Wittgenstein but to study in particular
how Boltzmann’s conception of Bildtheorie seems to have been at least partly incorporated
into the approach of Ludwig Wittgenstein.

1. INTRODUCTION 1

While the German word “Bild” is normally translated as picture, as we

shall see, physicists gradually began identifying it with what in English we
would call analogy, theory, model, and ultimately even thought, proposi-
tion, and language. What were Bilder and Bildtheorien about? They were
generally about the physical world as variously understood in terms of
different epistemological and ontological assumptions, that is, sometimes
they were intentionally about sensory appearances treated as the physical
world, sometimes the same appearances treated as a representation of the
physical world, sometimes with appearances as appearances, sometimes
with the physical world as if it existed beyond sensory appearances, some-
times there was only analogous or weak correspondence with one of the
above, and sometimes there was no correspondence at all. Pictures don’t
always happen to picture anything.
But the vogue of Bildtheorien took place partly within and partly in
opposition to a radical attempt to simplify both methodology of physics
and its final product. When Boltzmann discusses “picture theory” it is
normally in a context where radical methodological reductionism seems
to be looming over his shoulder and in a partly hostile manner. To be

Synthese 119: 135–156, 1999.

© 1999 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
136 HENK VISSER

sure, all physicists have had an interest in replacing complex mathematical

equations and laws with simpler and more inclusive ones, but the German
simplification campaign of the 1870’s went well-beyond that.

2. RADICAL SIMPLIFICATION

Galileo Galilei had attempted to make understanding the real physical

world beyond the appearances the main purpose of physics, but in 1874,
Gustav Robert Kirchhoff (1824–1887) shocked many physicists by seem-
ing to reject that goal. He had become famous for his spectral discoveries
during the 1850’s and 1860’s which appeared to discover several new ele-
ments. This naturally pleased those scientists who believed in the reality of
atoms. They also enjoyed his refutation of Auguste Comte’s claim that the
composition of the sun would never be known. But Kirchhoff now seemed
to cut off his own legs by announcing that henceforth the task of mechanics
would merely be to “describe movements in nature in the simplest and
most complete way” (Kirchhoff 1874a and 1874b). Above all, he seemed
to want to reduce physics to mathematical formulas and to kinematics as
if it were not concerned with causes or causal explanation.2
Ernst Mach (1838–1916) the Prague physicist would later claim that
he had anticipated Kirchhoff’s program by two years,3 but Kirchhoff was
much more famous than Mach at that time and Boltzmann would be shaken
much more by the Heidelberg scientist who the very following year in 1875
would transfer to Berlin. Nevertheless, Mach’s simplification approach,
which would gradually influence Boltzmann was much more extreme.
Mach called it “Denkökonomie”. Not only should science focus primarily
on describing the appearances according to Mach, but he also held (1)
that there was no physical world beyond the appearances such that atoms
and molecules were unreal; (2) the study of motion should be reduced
to what most physicists (but not Mach) understand by “kinematics”; (3)
theories only had a provisional status in physics; and (4) the primary end
goal of physics was not the discovery of laws but what he called “math-
ematical functions” as the most direct and simplest manner of describing
appearances.4
Later, two prominent anti-atomists Wilhelm Ostwald (1853–1932) one
of the founders of physical-chemistry and Pierre Duhem (1861–1916)
a French physicist and philosopher of science, joined the simplifica-
tion effort. In particular they defended what they called “energeticism”
against atomism and against “mechanistic science” as well as being for
thermodynamics but against Boltzmann’s statistical mechanics.
 BOLTZMANN AND WITTGENSTEIN 137

Ludwig Boltzmann (1844–1906) with his apparent presuppositions

about the reality of atoms and molecules in his kinetic theory of gases
should have been strongly opposed to the simplification programs of both
Kirchhoff and Mach, but sometimes he was opposed and sometimes he
wanted to reconcile his own approach with radical simplification. Under-
standably, he became troubled. Almost all of his work rested on the atomic
theory, but the radical simplifiers considered both the theory and belief in
the existence of atoms to be superfluous.
Boltzmann fought back and directed his (subsequently famous) formu-
lation that the goal of a physical theory consisted in “constructing a picture
of the external world that exists purely internally” (Boltzmann 1905, 77;
Boltzmann 1974, 33) – which by the way, does not exclude that such
pictures cannot be described in words.
Why are formulas not the essence of a theory? Boltzmann’s answer
was that “the true theoretician” though he “uses them in order to sim-
plify or economize as much as he can, expresses in words what can be
said in words” (Boltzmann 1905, 76). One could almost paraphrase this
as “everything which can be said, can be said clearly” which of course
is a quotation from the preface of Wittgenstein’s Logisch-philosophische
Abhandlung or Tractatus (Wittgenstein 1998, 2; cf. 58; 4.116).
Nevertheless, Boltzmann tried to satisfy the radical reductionists. He
was willing at least in principle to stop referring to causes and explanation
except as mental pictures (Boltzmann 1974, 5–12). He also seemed to ac-
cept their opposition to the reality of atoms provided that he was allowed
to call them pictures. As for continuity and discontinuity of motion and
change in physics he thought that hypotheses about them were pictures and
that the latter discontinuous picture was still needed in physics as electron
theory demonstrated.
In fact, his defence of the reality of atoms was retained in an analogous
form by his defence of the broader concept of discontinuity. Whether be-
neath these concessions he still held his earlier belief in atoms in his ‘heart
of hearts’ remains unclear. But even these concessions failed to satisfy his
philosophical opponents in physical science such as Mach and Ostwald,
presumably because he still allowed that causes, explanation, and atoms
were at least useful mental pictures whereas they apparently wanted him to
abandon pictures altogether as ‘uneconomic’, except perhaps as mere heur-
istic or transient devices. In fact, both Ostwald and Duhem distinguished
between ‘economic’ science which emphasized mathematical equations
and uneconomic science which relied heavily on pictures and visual mod-
els. Boltzmann retaliated in his article on models for the Encyclopaedia
Britannica (1902) by suggesting how much understanding and enlighten-
138 HENK VISSER

ment were lost by attempting to simplify physics by doing without pictures

and models (Boltzmann 1974, 213–220).5 Duhem is still well-known for
having distinguished between English and French science on the basis of
simplicity, but even if his contrast was overdrawn there was some truth to
it.
Understandably, Boltzmann in his travail literally turned to English sci-
ence for support and consolation. More English scientists seemed to accept
Galileo’s conception of the primary purpose of physical science and also
the probable reality of atoms and molecules. In addition, there appeared
to be much greater interest in his own work. It is not yet clear how many
scientific conferences he attended in England, but it was several with the
last being at Southport in 1903.

3. ENGLISH PICTURE THEORY

Michael Faraday (1791–1867), who made so many famous discoveries

concerning electricity and magnetism, seems not to have been fully per-
suaded about the reality of atoms and molecules and often referred to
them as “representations”, but this was not unusual for him as a non-
mathematician; he often thought about many things, real, hypothetical, and
fictional, in terms of representations as pictures. In fact, here is a passage
from Faraday on “his atomic theory or phraseology”:
But I confess I am jealous of the term atom; for though it is very easy to talk of atoms, it
is very difficult to form a clear idea of their nature, especially when compound bodies are
under consideration. (Faraday 1837, quoted by Turner 1927, 143)

Boltzmann, while surely influenced by Robert Zimmermann his own

professor of philosophy who had referred to the term “Bild” (Wilson, 1989,
252), nevertheless, attributed the introduction of picture theory at least into
physics to James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879).6
Maxwell, of course, may have gotten the notion of pictures in phys-
ics from Faraday, since Maxwell in his attempt to translate Faraday’s
qualitative ideas into mathematical and quantitative terms was naturally
well-acquainted with the famous experimenter’s work, but his own use was
different from that of his older colleague. Maxwell’s “pictures” were often
or normally more visual models which provided a kind of understanding by
analogy and were not to be taken as factually accurate (Garber 1995, 21).
They were not even rough or approximate accounts of what was empiric-
ally or physically real, but by providing merely analogous understanding
were not properly descriptive at all. Indeed, to some physicists they seemed
more like irrelevant icing on a cake of excessively abbreviated equations,
 BOLTZMANN AND WITTGENSTEIN 139

so abbreviated that even Boltzmann had trouble understanding them. Still,

Maxwell and Boltzmann are usually considered to have been the founders
and chief contributors to kinetic theory of gases and along with Gibbs of
what became called “statistical mechanics”.
A difference between Maxwell and Boltzmann about pictures as visual
or mechanical models was that Boltzmann seemed to take them much more
seriously than Maxwell, even though Boltzmann was well-aware that they
might not be descriptively accurate at all and even after he stopped talking
about the reality of atoms. But later in his life, Boltzmann also recognized
that theoretical physics whether Newtonian or not was idealized such that
no picture, model, or even law or equation could be literally accurate with
respect to real particulars. As with many later theorists, this naturally in-
vited him to take a somewhat pragmatic turn, as if physical theories were to
be justified by their utility within and outside of science (Fasol–Boltzmann,
142). This also helped justify both Newton’s ‘mechanistic science’ as well
as his own kinetic theory of gases. But unlike Mach, while he may have
often associated pictures with theories, he considered them as at least
potentially permanent aspects of science.
British science, however, seems to have had other picture theorists
besides Faraday and Maxwell. Indeed, John Tyndall (1820–1893) who
replaced Faraday in London and became well-known in the 1860’s and
later for determining why the sky looks blue and how light could help
make solutions in water transparent, translucent, or opaque may also have
influenced Boltzmann. Tyndall, who also became famous as a popular-
izer of science, once wrote concerning the explosion of a balloon and the
resulting sound as follows:
Scientific education ought to teach us to see the invisible as well as the visible in nature;
to picture with the eye of the mind those operations which entirely elude the eye of the
body; to look at the very atoms of matter in motion and at rest, and to follow them forth,
without ever once losing sight of them, into the world of the senses, and see them there
integrating themselves in natural phenomena. With regard to the point of view now under
consideration, you will, I trust, endeavor to form a definite image of a wave of sound,
You ought to see mentally the air particles when urged outwards by the explosion of our
balloon crowding closely together; but immediately behind this condensation you ought
to see the particles separated more widely apart. You, ought, in short, to be able to seize
the conception that a sonorous wave consists of two portions, in the one of which the air
is more dense, and in the other of which it is less dense than usual. A condensation and a
rarefaction, then, are the two constituents of a wave of sound.

The quotation speaks for itself, but after awhile Tyndall returned to his
experiment with the following words:
You have, I doubt not, a clear mental picture of the propagation of the sound from our
exploding balloon through the surrounding air. (Tyndall 1867, 10)
140 HENK VISSER

Is then this perhaps the locus classicus of the notion of ‘mental pic-
ture’ that is so abundant in Boltzmann’s writings? On closer inspection, I
find that Tyndall’s use of the expression closer to and more illuminating
than with Maxwell who seems to have verbally preferred “mental repres-
entation” to “mental picture”. Indeed, Tyndall above explicitly refers to
picturing atoms and particles which cannot be seen by “the eye of the
body”. Like many other English scientists he seems to have taken the
reality of atoms and molecules for granted. Indeed, as John Blackmore
mentions in his essay, almost all physics textbooks outside of Germany
and Austria seemed to take the reality of atoms and molecules for granted
as early as the 1850’s and 1860’s, especially in the most popular text-
books. Boltzmann, who surely sympathized with this approach, was much
more circumspect, which is understandable given the wide opposition to
atoms and molecules in German physics and their obsession with radical
simplification.
Boltzmann’s solution, as mentioned above, was to identify or at least
talk about atoms and molecules as if they were “Bilder”, that is, mental
pictures, but without making it clear whether such “particles” were in-
cluded within Maxwell’s “mental representations” or were identical with
theories, models, analogies, literal representations, or language. Whether
Boltzmann abandoned Galilean methodology of science with his increas-
ing reluctance to claim that atoms and molecules were real, and as if ‘save
the appearances’ science of Bellarmine or Mach were legitimate and only
needed to be augmented with ‘pictures’, remains an open and much dis-
puted question. He was clearly looking for some kind of compromise or
accommodation which would bring pictures and radical methodological
reduction into compatibility with each other while protecting the essentials
of Newtonian mechanics and his own scientific contributions to gas theory
and his statistical interpretation of the second law of thermodynamics.

4. HERTZ ’ S COMPROMISE

Meanwhile during the 1880’s, young Heinrich Hertz (1857–1894) was

making a name for himself by setting up an experiment to test predictions
based on Maxwell’s equations and successfully measuring the result. This
not only confirmed Maxwell but was accompanied by the discovery of
radio waves. It was now clear that light and electromagnetism were very
closely related. Soon the electromagnetic spectrum was worked out which
showed that light was only a small part of the spectrum. Hertz died in 1894,
the same year that his famous contribution to theoretical physics appeared
in print, namely, his book on theoretical mechanics.
 BOLTZMANN AND WITTGENSTEIN 141

Hertz tried to continue the simplification campaign of Mach, Ostwald,

Duhem, and Kirchhoff. Kirchhoff had attempted to eliminate causes and
explanation; Mach rejected atoms and molecules, Ostwald and Duhem
attempted to put ‘pure’ thermodynamics above statistical mechanics, and
Hertz joined them by opposing the notion of force as if physics could do
without it. But in the process he also allowed for “hidden masses” and
what Boltzmann called “hidden motion” (Boltzmann 1974, 90). Now, the
very phrases will sound odd to atomists who think that the entire physical
world is ‘hidden’ in that it exists beyond sensory and conscious limits,
but in the German context where many physicists still identified the phys-
ical world with appearances, to permit the existence of hidden masses or
hidden motions which were in principle non-sensory and non-conscious
was ‘metaphysical’ and ‘unscientific’, hence they found it hard to accept
Hertz’s somewhat artificial-seeming conception of mechanics.
On the other hand, Hertz not only supported “Bildtheorie” but elabor-
ated the characteristics of pictures in a much more careful and exact man-
ner than Maxwell or Boltzmann.7 This of course fascinated Boltzmann,
since it suggested the very compromise approach he wanted, more re-
duction for the phenomenalists and energeticists and yet pictures to help
protect the atomic theory as if atoms and molecules as pictures were
indispensable to science.
But on reflection, Boltzmann increasingly agreed with many of his
colleagues that Heinrich Hertz’s reconstruction of the basic principles of
mechanics was not practical enough to replace Newtonian mechanics. And
as for pictures, Hertz formalized them too much as S. D’Agostino has poin-
ted out (D’Agostino 1990, 384). They were formal and virtually Kantian
laws of thought. Indeed, Boltzmann held that mental phenomena could be
inherited and were subject to change. To the extent anything a priori was
real, then to that extent it was also subject to evolution. This suggested that
much of Hertz’s system was unreal or impractical.
Furthermore, almost nothing was known of the internal structure of
atoms and molecules at that time, hence all in all it seemed wiser for
Boltzmann to keep what was meant by Bildtheorie sufficiently imprecise
and flexible in order to remain compatible with a wide-range of potentially
divisible atoms possessing a wide range of possible shapes and sizes.
Concerning Hertz’s book, it attracted much attention from physicists,
indeed, enough to popularize the terms Bildtheorie and Bild for reference
to anything outside of the shrunken corpus which Mach and the other
reductionists had seemed to leave standing (Hertz 1894). The resulting
vagueness soon transformed pictures into any idea or theory, essentially
a provisional or temporary one, with the result being that in a few years
142 HENK VISSER

Planck, Einstein, and even Mach himself began using the terms in both
scientific and popular articles. But while Boltzmann continued to take the
notions seriously, they almost became as ubiquitous as “paradigm” and
“normal science” today.
Why the expressions dropped out of fashion is another story, but the
usage apparently declined in frequency at about the same time as the
Mach–Kirchhoff simplification campaign faded, that is from about 1905
to 1925. Perhaps the final obituary of the latter movement came when
Max Born stated that the best way to practice Denkökonomie was to stop
thinking altogether.

5. LANGUAGE AND WITTGENSTEIN

As soon as the word Bild became a substitute for theory, the possibility of
associating it with language and propositions probably became obvious.
Theories are expressed in words so why not Bilder? But some thinkers
preferred language without pictures. For example, William Kingdon Clif-
ford, the short-lived (1845–1879) mathematician and philosopher who is
said to have been influenced by the early work of Ernst Mach, insisted: “we
think not in pictures but in words” (Clifford 1872). Other English scientists
and thinkers also emphasized the importance of words over equations, but
not necessarily with the same objections to pictures.
For example, in the opinion of William Stanley Jevons (1835–1882),
the well-known logician and economist, the correspondence between ar-
rangements of words and arrangements of things is much wider, though
he acknowledges that “in the use of language we are obviously capable of
forming many combinations of words to which no corresponding meaning
apparently exists” (Jevons 1892, 643). But this does not alter the fact that
language can be seen as a powerful instrument for scientific ends.
But this development requires some careful analysis into the respective
roles of Boltzmann and a young man called Ludwig Wittgenstein. Read-
ers of Boltzmann’s late work are well-aware that Boltzmann developed a
linguistic philosophy (1903–1905) which could readily be interpreted to
transform the purpose of philosophy from trying to understand the founda-
tions of nature or the presuppositions underlying our understanding of that
foundation to protecting science by spotting and eliminating all words and
especially questions from previous philosophy which had become useless
or unanswerable in terms of current science (Blackmore 1995b, 89–112).
These questions and words Boltzmann regarded as “meaningless”.
Given the evolving nature of science where language in its own evol-
ution ‘falls behind’ science, then the ‘pruning’ of old language is often
 BOLTZMANN AND WITTGENSTEIN 143

in order. The reason for this is that since Boltzmann in Lamarckian fash-
ion believed in the inheritance of acquired characteristics; he feared that
without pruning that pre- or outmoded scientific expressions by being
inherited by future generations could be used to block the progress of
science, hence they had to be revised or eliminated. Boltzmann’s own
interpretation, which was very important to him unwittingly included
Lamarckian features in what he called “Darwinism”. Mach on the other
hand seems to have been at least in part a witting Lamarckian (Mach
1985, 142). In fact, removing all aspects of Lamarck’s ideas from popular
“Darwinism” seems not to have occurred until after the general acceptance
of Mendelian genetics, that is, about 1910, and even then Lamarckism
lingered in some circles well after.8
A task for future philosophers of science in Boltzmann’s opinion as
expressed in his St. Louis lecture of 1904 would be to study pictures and
picture theory in order to free science from all ‘metaphysical’, ‘mean-
ingless’, and hence ‘unscientific’ linguistic content (Boltzmann 1974,
159–172). But loose as Boltzmann wanted to keep pictures as atoms until
atoms were better understood, when they did finally become understood
as divisible particles or corpuscles; with the discovery of electrons in 1897
this allowed him to begin to make his pictorial model of atoms a bit more
precise. It also implied, however, that the old billiard ball definition of
atoms (which Mach in his opposition to ‘indivisible’ atoms seemed de-
termined to insist upon) also had to be pruned out of science. In short,
Bilder were identified with theories, theories with language, and as theories
were replaced or redefined so was the accompanying language, at least
within up-to-date science.
In other words, Boltzmann who often thought of pictures as theories
wanted to be more rigorous in order to avoid ‘metaphysics’, though not
as rigorous as Hertz who did not seem to incorporate the possible evol-
ution of ‘laws of thought’. One also notices that Boltzmann increasingly
refers to Gedankenbilder, as if pictures as theories now referred to pictures
as thoughts with both theories and thoughts increasingly identified with
linguistically explicated verbal models.
Boltzmann finally acknowledged, despite his original formulation, that
science “is only an integral picture (ein inneres Bild) or mental con-
struction (gedankliche Konstruktion) that can never coincide with the
multiplicity of phenomena but only represent certain parts of them in an
ordered manner” (Boltzmann 1974, 106). Here is an extremely relevant
quotation:

Our task cannot be to summon data to the judgment-seat of our laws of thought, but rather
to adapt our thoughts, ideas, and concepts to what is given. Since we cannot clearly ex-
144 HENK VISSER

press such complicated conditions except by words, whether written, spoken, or thought
in silence, we can say that we must employ words in such a way as everywhere to lend
the most fitting expression to the given, so that the connections we create between words
are everywhere as adequate as possible to [science] and reality. (Boltzmann 1974, 165–166
and originally in Boltzmann 1905, 154.)

This attempt to bring pictures as thoughts with the latter understood

largely as linguistic models into closer conjunction with observation was of
course not completely new in Germany or Austria. Ostwald had anticipated
Boltzmann when he wrote that “all scientific representations rest on the
construction of assigned symbols of the same variety or multiplicity as
that which was represented and the lawful conservation of those symbols
in the place of real things” (Ostwald 1902, 100.). Nor is it impossible that
Boltzmann and Ostwald may have influenced each other, in spite of their
well-known differences over “energeticism”. Indeed, Ostwald’s statement
that there is a crucial difference between pictures and formulas might
have been an example of Boltzmann’s influence on Ostwald. Neverthe-
less, Boltzmann’s own formulation is so explicit that there is a smooth
transition from these remarks to the systematic treatment by a young philo-
sopher who already might have felt addressed directly by Boltzmann’s
well-known linguistic challenge to philosophy and his call for cooperation
between scientists and linguistically-minded philosophers at the end of his
St. Louis lecture. That young man was Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Having sketched some of Boltzmann’s views, I would now like to con-
sider Wittgenstein’s picture theory of language. I will not focus on the
similarities between Wittgenstein’s and Boltzmann’s “anti-philosophical”
views since they have already been discussed in the past, among others
by Gargani (1980), Blackmore (1983) and myself (Visser 1990), but it is
necessary to keep in mind Boltzmann’s opposition to words and questions
which pass beyond permissible bounds by inquiring into matters which
science cannot answer. For Boltzmann as for the Logical Positivists of a
later period, all legitimate questions were answerable by science, and if
not answerable they went “beyond the mark” and became “scientifically
meaningless”.
Wittgenstein as we all know, eventually claimed to have succeeded
in creating a ‘system’ in which “a limit is drawn to the expression
of thoughts” (Wittgenstein 1998, 2). That this sounds like an answer
to Boltzmann’s demand, is admitted by everyone who has written on
Wittgenstein’s debt to Boltzmann’s Populäre Schriften. But that Wittgen-
stein’s ’system’ itself might have been directly or consciously modelled
after Boltzmann’s Gedankenbilder in his new representation of classical
mechanics, is an hypothesis that is still in need of support.
 BOLTZMANN AND WITTGENSTEIN 145

I said that there is a smooth transition from the above quotation to Wit-
tgenstein’s philosophy. Hereby, I do not mean to say that the problems of
philosophy which Wittgenstein dealt with were formulated by Boltzmann,
nor that he agreed with everything that Boltzmann said, for example on
the utility of the Darwinian theory for philosophy (cf. Wittgenstein 1998,
56: 4.1122). Many of Wittgenstein’s problems were related to the logic
of the Principia mathematica of Russell and Whitehead, and it is clear
that Boltzmann from an earlier period lacked the faintest idea of such
problems, moreover his conception of logical laws is quite different from
Wittgenstein’s. I am only concerned with the problem that is raised by
Boltzmann’s statement of the adequacy of the connections between words
to the connections within reality, a problem that haunted Wittgenstein dur-
ing the time that he worked on his logico-philosophical treatise a few years
after Boltzmann’s death. For even as late as 1915 Wittgenstein complained:
“I cannot even bring out how far the proposition is the picture (Bild) of the
situation (des Sachverhaltes). I am almost inclined to give up all of my
efforts” (Wittgenstein 1961, 41e).
But most important is the fact that Wittgenstein’s whole enterprise is
unthinkable without the idea that verbal propositions can (also) be con-
sidered as pictures. This idea had tremendous implications which can
be successively found in Wittgenstein’s manuscripts, and, finally, in the
Logisch-philosophische Abhandlung [the Tractatus] itself. I mention three
of them.
First, “propositions [which are symbols having reference to facts] are
themselves facts” according to Wittgenstein in his so-called first manu-
script (Wittgenstein 1979, 97). His example – “that this inkpot is on the
table may express that I sit in this chair” – already reveals that propos-
itions are pictures by virtue of their logical form. Second, this leads to
the view that such a proposition is the logical picture of a situation (das
logische Bild eines Sachverhaltes) (Wittgenstein 1979, 97). Third, this
makes a transition to a logical notation possible and this goes together with
the postulation of ‘atomic’ propositions, as the second manuscript shows
(Wittgenstein 1979, 98).
These implications are clearly expressed in Wittgenstein’s notebooks,
notably after Wittgenstein reached “the certainty that we can portray all
logical properties of situations in a two-dimensional script” (die Gewis-
sheit, dass wir alle logischen Eigenschaften der Sachverhalte in einer
zweidimensionalen Schrift abbilden können) (Wittgenstein 1961, 7). Why
he nevertheless kept wrestling with the problem how far the proposition is
the picture of the situation, is difficult to answer; moreover the question of
how Wittgenstein came to a solution of this problem is a complicated mat-
146 HENK VISSER

ter. On the one hand, the postulated logical form of situations is determined
by language:
. . . since language stands in internal relation to the world, it and these relations determine
the logical possibility of facts. If we have a significant sign, it must stand in a partic-
ular (bestimmten) internal relation to a structure (Gebilde). Sign and relation determine
unambiguously the logical form of the thing signified. (Wittgenstein 1961, 42ff)

On the other hand, facts are what they are, whether we describe them
or not: “The proposition is the picture of the fact. I can devise different
pictures of a fact. (. . . ) But what is characteristic of the fact will be the
same in all of these pictures and will not depend on me” (Wittgenstein
1961, 46ff).
Eventually, Wittgenstein’s general ‘theory’ was presented in three
steps. After a general introduction of central notions such as “world”,
“facts”, “situation”, “objects”, and “forms of objects”, Wittgenstein dis-
tinguishes first pictures (Bilder) of facts, which are themselves also facts.
This enables him to say that “a picture consists herein, that its elements
are related to each other in a definite way” (Das Bild besteht darin, dass
sich seine Elemente in bestimmter Art und Weise zu einander verhalten)
(Wittgenstein 1998, 12: 2.14).
Second, Wittgenstein introduces thoughts (Gedanken) as logical pic-
tures of facts, an abstraction based on the logical form that each picture
(of whatever form) must have in common with reality, in order to be able
to represent it at all – rightly or falsely (um sie überhaupt – richtig oder
falsch – abbilden zu können) (Wittgenstein 1998, 14; 1922, 41).
Third, he introduces sentences (Sätze) in which thoughts are expressed
“perceptibly through the senses” (sinnlich wahrnehmbar) (Wittgenstein
1998, 18; 1922, 45). He calls the symbol through which a thought is ex-
pressed a “propositional sign” (Satzzeichen), and then he concludes that the
propositional sign consists herein that its elements are related to each other
in a definite way (Das Satzzeichen besteht darin, dass sich seine Elemente,
die Wörter, in ihm auf bestimmte Art und Weise zu einander verhalten)
(Wittgenstein 1998, 20; 3.14).
This summary of Wittgenstein’s general theory has already shown how
close he stood to Bollzmann. Both had a broad conception of ‘pictures’.
but also emphasized the correspondence relations between pictures and
facts, only Wittgenstein went one step further than Boltzmann’s criterion
for “the most fitting expression in terms of the adequacy of the connections
between words and the connections of reality” which had been stated in
his St. Louis lecture on statistical mechanics. He introduced the notion
of logical form for such connections. Thus Wittgenstein came to regard a
proposition primarily as a picture of a situation in so far as it is a logical
 BOLTZMANN AND WITTGENSTEIN 147

picture. Similarly, an actual thought is, of course also a logical picture (Der
Gedanke ist natürlich auch ein logisches Bild) (Wittgenstein 1961, 82).
But philosophers may also suspect a difference between Boltzmann
and Wittgenstein concerning what each man meant by the term ‘reality’.
Boltzmann was perhaps understandably ambiguous in order to help per-
suade advocates of different positions to support his ideas in physics, but
it is possible that Wittgenstein had a fixed position and meant one when he
used the expression or an equivalent. Furthermore, Boltzmann, who was
fully conscious of how idealized theoretical physics was, never held that
pictures could fully capture the contents of ‘reality’ and normally were
far from complete. Indeed, many ‘pictures’ could be useful and hence
pragmatically ‘true’ even if there was no correspondence with ‘reality’.
Wittgenstein, however, at least when preparing the way for his Tractatus
seemed to be much more demanding.
On the other hand, Boltzmann counted a variety of structures as pic-
tures, including propositions. and so did Wittgenstein, only the latter
brought these different pictures closer together by attributing a logical form
to them which may remind us somewhat of Hertz; moreover, his postula-
tion of atomic or elementary propositions, an attempt at simplification,
enabled him to somewhat more definitively articulate his views on logic,
probability, and philosophy of science.
This completes my argument for the claim that there is a smooth
transition from quotations drawn from Boltzmann, even if not fully un-
derstood by the younger man, to the theoretical account put forward by
Wittgenstein. But this is not the end of the matter, Wittgenstein postulated
elementary propositions (Elementarsätze) consisting of simple signs, so
that the objects of a thought correspond to the elements of the proposi-
tional sign (Wittgenstein 1998, 22). Such an elementary proposition asserts
the existence of a so-called “situation” (Der einfachste Satz, der Element-
arsatz, behauptet das Bestehen eines Sachverhaltes). (Wittgenstein 1998,
68; 4.21). In that case, “to the configuration of the simple signs in the pro-
positional sign corresponds with the configuration of the objects in the state
of affairs”. (Der Konfiguration der einfachen Zeichen im Satzzeichen ents-
pricht die Konfiguration der Gegenstände in der Sachlage) (Wittgenstein
1998, 22; 1922, 47–49; 3.21). The question is whether Wittgenstein had
already postulated in his general introduction that the objects which he had
in view were simple objects (Der Gegenstand ist einfach) (Wittgenstein
1898, 8).
On this point, it can be asked: where did this idea come from? As-
suming that Wittgenstein had read Boltzmann’s Populäre Schriften, the
answer is easily given that his simple objects are formed on the analogy of
148 HENK VISSER

material points. However, there are no references in Wittgenstein’s writ-

ings to Boltzmann, whereas there are to Hertz, so we are driven back
to those remarks by Wittgenstein – in his notebooks or in writings in
which he says something in retrospect of his earlier work – that bear some
analogy to Boltzmann’s views. To be more precise, we have to compare
Wittgenstein’s comments on his notions of “simple objects” and “element-
ary proposition” with Boltzmann’s “material points” and his “atomistic
pictures”.
In supporting one’s argument by referring to the notes of someone
else one must be careful not to attribute more weight to them than they
can bear. Since the following quotations from Wittgenstein contain well-
known examples and not any theses per se, then perhaps they are relatively
safe to employ. Within the context he describes, Wittgenstein holds that
what is depicted by elementary propositions and situations (Sachverhal-
ten), must consist of “simple objects” (einfache Gegenstände). Boltzmann
also would have preferred such simplicity and he gave it to his idealized
material points in his physics, but the real world was another thing, hence,
he would surely have agreed with Wittgenstein that it is difficult to give a
real example of such an object. Indeed, Wittgenstein writes in 1915: “Our
difficulty was that we kept on speaking of simple objects [but] were unable
to mention a single [real] one” (Wittgenstein 1961, 68c, and 1979). This is
manifestly closer to Boltzmann than to Hertz.
And on the same day, June 21, 1915 he also writes: “It always looks
as if there were complex objects functioning as really simple ones, like
the material point in physics, etc.” (Wittgenstein 1979). Here the refer-
ence is to what was conspicuously though not exclusively employed in
Boltzmann’s physics, namely, a clear distinction between what was real
and what was merely ideal. (But given the intellectual Zeitgeist in which
Edmund Husserl was then arguing that what was ideal could be made con-
scious as if real, perhaps it is better to leave the actual view of Wittgenstein
concerning the differences between realities and idealities open.)
On the other hand, Wittgenstein also referred to Hertz’s “hidden
masses” – in Wittgenstein’s terminology unsichtbare Massen – but I never
had the intention of arguing that Hertz was not important for Wittgenstein.
Yet in the above quotations Wittgenstein seems initially concerned more
with pictures as pictures than as models – thus, neither in the sense of
theories – a double view which was also Boltzmann’s focus in physics
before Hertz’s book came out (1894) and presumably to a considerable
extent afterwards as well.
We can also introduce an atomistic picture by Wittgenstein in the sense
of Boltzmann the theoretical physicist and its expression in words that a
 BOLTZMANN AND WITTGENSTEIN 149

certain material point is in a certain place – plus an attempt to formalize

this assertion. This seems to support my hypothesis, even though Wittgen-
stein does not use notation similar to that of the Principia Mathematica.
He writes: “We might conceive two coordinates ap and bp as a proposition;
stating that the material point P is in the place (ab)” (Wittgenstein 1961;
20e–21e).
But is it plausible to base oneself on so few examples? In order to
answer this question I refer to a remark that Wittgenstein made later, about
1929, when he looked back on his earlier views:

When I construed the language which used a coordinate system for the representation of
a situation (bei der Darstellung des Sachverhaltes) in space, I thereby introduced a con-
stituent into language which it otherwise does not contain or employ. This way is certainly
admissible, and it shows the connection between language and reality. The written sign
without the coordinate system is without meaning. (Wittgenstein 1964, 79)

In other words, the traditional language of mechanics is admittedly

different from other linguistic means for describing the world, but it is a
form of world description, and it starts with the representation of situations
which in theory is done by elementary propositions.
That Wittgenstein himself used the language of mechanics as an ex-
ample of a means of representation is, of course, no surprise. After all,
he had studied technical mechanics in Berlin and his textbooks must have
provided him with an abundance of “world descriptions” in the language of
mechanics, even quite general ones in the sense that “there is (. . . ) never
any mention of particular material points in it, but always only of some
points or other” (Wittgenstein 1998, 164; 6.3432).
As far as I know, the question which textbooks Wittgenstein used in
Boltzmann’s favourite subject in the Technische Hochschule in Berlin–
Charlottenburg is not yet settled. Föppl’s well-known Einführung in die
Mechanik – volume one of his Vorlesungen über technische Mechanik –
uses the notion of picture (Bild) in connection with material points them-
selves (Föppl 1904). What may be safely conjectured, however, is that
Hertz’s book on mechanics, given its inappropriate character for students
was not used as a textbook. Very congenial to Wittgenstein was clearly
Boltzmann’s use of the notion for material points which have at each time
a given position relative to a coordinate system, which can be found in the
latter’s Vorlesungen über die Principe der Mechanik (I 1897 and II 1904).
An interesting sidelight, but whose relevance needs to be examined, is
that August Föppl who we have just mentioned and Josef Petzoldt, the only
philosopher of science at the Berlin Technical University which Wittgen-
stein attended, were both strong supporters of Ernst Mach, Boltzmann’s
150 HENK VISSER

Austrian colleague, occasional opponent, and leader of the radical simpli-

fication program in physics.9

6. CONCLUSION

Boltzmann was not a professional philosopher. Yet when he nevertheless

wrote on the relation between thought and reality, between thought and
language, and eventually also between language and reality, he did this
without the one-sidedness of other scientists or ‘genuine’ philosophers,
and in a way that might have helped Wittgenstein to articulate his general
philosophical theory on the relation of thought, language, and reality. But
also Wittgenstein’s particular picture theory might have been inspired by
Boltzmann’s special picture theory on mechanics. Though Wittgenstein
left his elementary propositions unspecified he did not consider them
numerical statements in the sense of Kirchhoff, let alone mathematical
equations in the sense of Hertz, but something like atomistic ‘pictures’
in the sense of Tyndall and Boltzmann.

7. POSTSCRIPT

As I have said before, Wittgenstein’s postulation of elementary proposi-

tions made it easier for him to articulate his views on logic, probability,
and philosophy of science, propositions which may have been suggested
by Boltzmann’s understanding of pictures and mechanics and Mach’s con-
tribution to the radical simplification campaign of the period. On the other
hand, it is difficult to find points of contact between Boltzmann the philo-
sopher’s views on logic and Wittgenstein’s new approach, particularly as
influenced by Russell and Whitehead, but more can be said about his views
on probability and methodology of science.
We know how important the theory of probability was for Boltzmann in
both his scientific and methodological work, but we can still ask whether
his discussion of its principles went further than the remarks in section 6 of
his Vorlesungen über Gastheorie (II 1898). He may have also participated
in the discussion in the University of Vienna Philosophical Society after
Emanuel Czuber’s lecture of March 17, 1896 titled “Critical Remarks on
the Principles of the theory of Probability?” (Kritische Bemerkungen zu
den Grundbegriffen der Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung) and the follow-up
discussion session of April 28 (Höfler 1913, 7 and 26). He is known to
have attended the Society’s sessions and often intervened in them. It is
also known that the last book which he planned to write was intended to
 BOLTZMANN AND WITTGENSTEIN 151

be a criticism of a priori probability and knowledge’ (Blackmore 1995a,

205).10
But what does this have to do with Wittgenstein? Well, it seems that a
central concern of the philosophy of probability since its beginning has to
do with the concept of ‘equal probability’. But it appears that Boltzmann
and Wittgenstein took the same step.11 In 1904 in his lecture titled “Stat-
istical mechanics” which he gave at a conference at the St. Louis World’s
Fair Boltzmann separated mathematical theory in which the concept of
equal probability is ‘given’ from the application to natural phenomena.
Wittgenstein did the same thing in the Tractatus, only he based the
concept of ‘equal probability’ in its mathematical form on ‘theory of truth’
grounds (Wahrheitsgründe) for propositions, a view which goes way back
in time to Moses Mendelssohn’s essay “Über die Wahrscheinlichkeit. But
the fact that both Boltzmann and Wittgenstein were so explicit about the
hypothetical character of probability statements in physics helps provide
additional evidence (along with the similarities in their approach to lin-
guistic philosophy and their critical attitude toward traditional philosophy)
that Wittgenstein had not just read but carefully studied that particular
article, as a chapter in Boltzmann’s Populäre Schriften (1905).
More has recently become known about Boltzmann’s philosophy of
science (cf. Blackmore 1995b, chapter 5), but in our case here it is Wit-
tgenstein’s position which is unclear. It has been argued that Wittgenstein’s
debt to Mach’s Popular Scientific Lectures was great (Visser 1982), but
Boltzmann’s influence can only be pinned down when we know more
about Wittgenstein’s thought. To be sure, the influence seems to come
from more than one book and even in that book it was probably a single
chapter, namely, the one on linguistic philosophy mistitled about statistical
mechanics which strikes one’s attention. But there are at least two more
similarities between Wittgenstein’s and Boltzmann’s formulations which
presumably came from somewhere.
First, about additional evidence that Wittgenstein had absorbed
Boltzmann’s article on “statistical Mechanics”, when Wittgenstein wrote
“In Hertz’s terminology” that only lawful connections are thinkable, (Wit-
tgenstein 1990, 166; 6.361) this reminds us also of Boltzmann, who wrote
in his St. Louis address that “the lawfulness of the processes in nature is
the fundamental condition of all knowability” (Boltzmann 1905, 354).
Second, Wittgenstein acknowledged that different systems of world de-
scription can differ in precision and simplicity, with an explicit reference
to different theories of mechanics. (Wittgenstein 1990, 162–166; 6.341
and 6.346). This reminds us of several remarks by Boltzmann in con-
nection with his discussions of Hertz’s Mechanics and Kirchhoff’s ideas
152 HENK VISSER

(Boltzmann 1905 and Blackmore 1995a, 77–85). So when Wittgenstein’s

aim was to demonstrate the reciprocity (gegenseitige Stellung) of logic
and mechanics in this respect, it seems that the metatheoretical devel-
opments instigated by Kirchhoff also influenced Wittgenstein’s thoughts
about logic! He tried to reconcile both sides.
Indeed, it could be argued at least by friends of Wittgenstein that he
was much more successful than either Hertz or Boltzmann in combining
the two main methodological traditions in theoretical physics of the time,
the English tradition of picture theories emphasized by Maxwell and Tyn-
dall and the German tradition of radical simplification stressed by Mach,
Kirchhoff, Ostwald, and in France by Duhem. The linguistic aspect of
Bilder was always latent given the widespread tendency to identify them
with theories, but Boltzmann brought language to center stage in his St.
Louis lecture. Also, while some people – in spite of the evidence above –
may still be inclined to argue over whether Boltzmann or Hertz had more
influence on Wittgenstein’s conception of pictures, there can be no doubt
that the linguistic aspect or side of Wittgenstein’s Bilder clearly came from
Boltzmann.
Unfortunately for Wittgenstein, however, increasing evidence for the
reality of atoms and molecules in physics as a whole and the very complex
relations between them (and between sub-atomic particles on the quantum
level) led to the decline and eventual collapse of the Mach–Kirchhoff
radical simplification approach in physics, though the same battered move-
ment with Wittgenstein’s help seemed to fare better within mathematical
logic, the Vienna Circle of the 1920’s, and soon afterwards with Logical
Positivism.
As for ‘picture theory’, while the label gradually decreased in use, what
pictures stood for from images, analogies, models, representations, realit-
ies, theories, thoughts, ideas, propositions, and language have continued to
be ubiquitous in physics, philosophy, and everyday life. Physics has turned
out to be much more complex than imagined at that time.
The urge for simplification remains, but radical simplification even
in the hands of great theorists like Einstein and Schrödinger who both
worked on ‘unified field theory’ has not yet produced satisfactory results.
As for causes, explanation, atoms, forces, theories, and other allegedly
‘uneconomical’ components of physics, they still seem indispensable in
numerous aspects or branches of that many-faceted discipline. Simplific-
ation of idealized structures is often possible, but attempts to simplify the
real world whether understood in ‘phenomenalist’ or ‘realist’ terms means
distortion.
 BOLTZMANN AND WITTGENSTEIN 153

On the other hand, whether simple or complex understanding best fits

the aims and ends we have in view, almost always heavily depends on
both the particular character of those aims and ends and on what external
conditions including the available instruments, time, and maximum effort
allow. Sometimes we have to accept a measure of possible or actual over-
simplification or distortion, but if we warn our colleagues such that no one
is misled, then we can normally live with this shortcoming – at least for a
while.

NOTES

1 Parts of this article have been augmented or re-written by the editor.

2 Kirchhoff’s famous dictum stems from 1874, but the following year it seems that
Auerbach helped popularize it (Auerbach 1923), even if he misdates it. Kirchhoff’s Vorle-
sungen über analytische mechanik . . . (1874a) together with a Prospectus (1874b) helped
clarify his position, but it was this Prospectus which added something new to our un-
derstanding of Kirchhoff because it contained concise information on his metatheoretical
position. The fact that Kirchhoff laid great stress on description by mathematical ex-
pressions and formulas encouraged the view that simplicity was to be understood in
mathematical terms, especially equations (Kirchhoff 1876, 465). Boltzmann rejected this
position in favor of pictures (Boltzmann 1974, 219).
3 See (Mach 1872) and (Mach 1960, xviii): “At a later date nearly the same ideas were
expressed by Kirchhoff”.
4 While most of Ernst Mach’s views are briefly presented in his (1872), his epistem-
ology is spelled out most fully in his (1886) and later editions, and his methodology
and philosophy of science in his (1905). Most physicists, however, seem to have inferred
Mach’s philosophy of science mostly from subsequent editions of his book on the history
of mechanics which originally appeared in 1883.
5 On the basis of a letter to Joseph Larmor dated January 7, 1900 one may infer that
Boltzmann began writing the article on models that year, but an undated letter announcing
its completion was very pessimistic “I am not pleased with it at all” he wrote. Hence, per-
haps we should be cautious about how closely the contents mirrored his best understanding.
For an English translation of the two letters see: (Blackmore 1995a, 57–58.)
6 Robert Zimmermann (1824–1898) taught philosophy to Boltzmann from 1863 to 1866
in the University of Vienna. His primary interest was aesthetics but he was also interested
in science including mechanics. Boltzmann took eight courses from him. For Boltzmann’s
attribution of pictures to Maxwell see: (Boltzmann 1974, 10, 217–219).
7 The debate over whether Hertz or Boltzmann had more influence on Wittgenstein’s con-
ception of pictures is an old one. For some of the literature see: (Wallner 1982, 143–153),
(Wilson 1989, 245–263), and (D’Agostino 1990, 380–398).
8 Thomas Hunt Morgan and Conway Zirkle in their article on “Lamarckism” assert: “By
the 1930’s the inheritance of acquired characteristics had been rejected by most students
of heredity, though belief in it persisted in popular and in some literary circles” (Morgan
and Zirkle 1963, 609).
9 Gerald Holton writes about Petzoldt and Föppl as follows: “Mach had thanked him
[Petzoldt] at once cordially for this information [about Einstein] on December 3, 1909,
154 HENK VISSER

and on February 21 1910 had asked again for the exact reference to it. A little earlier, on
January 11, 1910, August Föppl, also an acolyte, had written to Mach, apparently also in
reply to an inquiry about the Einstein-Minkowski thesis; . . . ” (Holton 1993, 61). For more
on Mach and Wittgenstein see (Visser 1982, 102–105).
10 This information comes from Boltzmann’s last letter to the Austrian philosopher Franz
Brentano dated January 16, 1906.
11 Boltzmann adds in the letter mentioned in Footnote #10 that he intends to write on the
notion “that all knowledge is to be equably chosen” (Dass alle Erkenntnis gleichmässig zu
wählen).

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