Monday, December 03, 2007

6.3751 It is impossible, that is, logically impossible, for, e.g., two colors to be at the same point in the field of vision, since this is excluded by the logical structure of color.

Let us consider how this contradiction presents itself in physics. Approximately thus: That a particle cannot have two velocities at the same time; meaning that it cannot be in two places at the same time; meaning that particles in different places at one time cannot be identical.

(It is clear that the logical product of two elementary propositions can be neither a tautology nor a contradiction. The expression that a point in the field of vision has two different colors at the same time is a contradiction.)

These are rules, then, of the ‘logics’ of physics and of color. These language-games have their own grammars, the later Wittgenstein would say.

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