Wittgenstein, part 2

So who was Ludwig Wittgenstein really? He was the youngest of nine children of one of the wealthiest men in Europe. Three of his older brothers committed suicide, two when Wittgenstein was still a boy, and a fourth brother, who was a concert pianist, lost his right arm in World War I. So he had a tough, although privileged, upbringing.

His father did not believe in sending his children to school, at least at a young age; he wanted them educated at home to prepare them for the business world. As a result, Wittgenstein did not attend school until he was sent at age fourteen to a technical high school, a Realschule, in Linz, Austria. Oddly, this was the same school that Adolf Hitler attended, although they did not know each other. They were the same age, but Hitler was two years behind.

Wittgenstein then attended the Technical University of Berlin (then called the Technische Hochschule) for mechanical engineering, graduating in 1908. In Berlin, he became interested in the then cutting edge field of aeronautical engineering, but also began his fascination with philosophy. Nevertheless, he was a dutiful son, and so, on his father’s recommendation, went to Manchester to study aeronautics.

Wittgenstein’s first research interest in Manchester was the dynamics of flying kites and how it related to the design of fixed wings. He spent some time designing and construction kites at a British kite weather station, but soon realized that the hot topic in aeronautics was engines, not kites, and so he switched his focus to engine and propeller design. But he still did not feel fulfilled by aeronautics and began studying pure mathematics in his spare time.

In November 1910, he submitted an application for a patent for a propeller with combustion chambers and reaction jets on the propeller’s tips. It was not, as some have suggested, a jet engine, but it was a start. Wittgenstein’s propeller was called innovative, ingenious, and ahead of his time; however, it did not lead directly to any aeronautical breakthroughs, and in fact was independently reinvented during World War II. Wittgenstein received his patent in August 1911, but he was already coming to the end of his engineering career. His mathematics work was taking over his life, and so, at the end of the 1911 summer break, he went to Germany to meet the great logician Gottlob Frege, who urged him to get to know the similarly celebrated Bertrand Russell in Cambridge.

This is a diagram of Wittgenstein's propeller. The combustion chambers are labeled C at each end of the propeller.

And this is about where aeronautical engineering ends and philosophy begins.

More tomorrow.