Wittgenstein wrote his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus in a very structured and rather peculiar style. In a collection of 525 numbered statements deals with the relationship between language and reality and aims to define the limits of science. A prominent view set out in the Tractatus is the picture theory, sometimes called the picture theory of language. The picture theory is a proposed explanation of the capacity of language and thought to represent the world.
Many put Wittgenstein in the logical positivist tradition -like his fellow Austrians of the Wiener Kreis - who adhere to a theory of knowledge that asserts that only statements verifiable through direct observation or logical proof are meaningful in terms of conveying truth value, information, or factual content.
But if we look at Wittgenstein's last statement in the Tractatus: "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." and many argue this is the central point of this work, this will put him more in the mystical tradition. After this work, Wittgenstein left philosophy altogether for years, convinced he had said everything there was to say.
Many years later in his Philosophische Unterzuchungen Wittgenstein employed a completely different style, writing more in aphorisms, which he calls language-games. A central feature of language-games is that language is used in context and that language cannot be understood outside of its context.
Without pretending to be able to explain the two different approaches in detail in a LinkedIn post, an analogy in business is this: the pure logical and numbers driven way to approach your business will always fall short, you need to complement it with emotion and storytelling to drive decisions in a certain context.
Are you more a logical or more a storytelling person?
