Machines, Logic and Wittgenstein

Wittgenstein’s “machines-as-symbols” are considered with respect to their historical sources and their symbolic and logical nature. Among these sources and precursors, along with Leonardo’s drawings of machines, there are illustrated “machine books” (theatra machinarum), a kind of book published in the period from the 16th to the 18th centuries which consist of pictures and descriptions of a variety of mechanical devices. Most probably, these books were one of Wittgenstein’s inspirations for his view of machines as components of language-games (not just for his earlier philosophy of depicting symbols in TLP). The picture of homo volans in Vrančić’s (Verantius) machine book (1615/16) possessed by Wittgenstein is taken as an example. In particular, homo volans is shown to contain patterns of logical laws and rules and to be abstractly interpretable as a logical symbol. A machine (or its picture), taken as a symbol, is shown (a) to be a precondition of a meaningful “overview” of a mechanical work (including logical formalisms) that exceeds the limits of decidability; (b) to possess causal features if causality is understood teleologically and in a deeper sense of a “binding” life.