Talk by Michael Howard!

(15/12/08) During this talk Michael Howard explained who Wittgenstein was, showed examples of his work and told us about the day trip to the Derbyshire Moors that we will be going on in March.

Wittgenstein (1889-1951) was a great philosopher who changed the ideas of philosophy during that time, he was the most important writer in the 20th Century. He went to study engineering in Manchester at the age of 18 with one aim-to design/build and fly a flying machine! Bearing in mind that the first powered flight was only in 1903, and the splitting of atom by Rutherford was only taking place during this time. After studying engineering he moved to Derbyshire Moors and he started to design kites and then Cody would make them. During the time of the end of the 19th Century, the Right Brothers sold their idea of flying-as a death machine-way of dropping bombs.

Wittgenstein's theories were:

• The world is everything, this is the case!
• Live your life-stop messing around.
• The world is made of facts not just things .
• You can only understand the world through language( the way that objects have names, how you describe objects with words)-how language interacts with the the facts of things (objects).
• The idea of the ladder-when you are trying to learn something your aim is to reach the top of the ladder, once you have you throw the ladder away and you start at the bottom again as you achieve to learn something new.
• Philosophy is a pratical tool/process not an end result-definition of philospohy (to Wittgenstein) is showing the fly the way out of a fly bottle.

When we go to the Moors we will be celebrating the creativity of ideas and imagination, we will have the opportunity to design and make a kite before we go which we will fly when we get there. These moors are significant as it is where Wittengenstein lived and came up with his ideas and inventions.

Michael Howard's talk was really interesting, he is full of all sorts of knowledge. After the lecture I left thinking how there are so may possiblities doing an art degree!!!