HOME TOP UP PREV NEXT 1 GERMAN MAP      Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 6.3611


6.3611
We cannot compare any process with the "passage of time" -- there is no such thing -- but only with another process (say, with the movement of the chonometer).

Hence the description of the temporal sequence of events is only possible if we support ourselves on another process.

It is exactly analogous for space. When, for example, we say that neither of two events (which mutually exclude one another) can occur, because there is no cause why the one should occur rather than the other, it is really a matter of our being unable to descibe one of the two events unless there is some sort of asymmetry. And if there is such an asymmetry, we can regard this as the cause of the occurrence of the one and of the non-occurrence of the other.


6.36111
The Kantian problem of the right and left hand which cannot be made to cover one another already exists in the plane, and even in one-dimensional space; where the two congruent figures a and b cannot be made to cover one another without
. . . o----A----x . . . x----B----o . . . .

moving them out of this space. The right and left hand are in fact completely congruent. And the fact that they cannot be made to cover one another has nothing to do with it.

A right-hand glove could be put on a left hand if it could be turned round in four-dimensional space.


HOME TOP UP PREV NEXT 1 GERMAN MAP      Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 6.3611