Another experiment with Wittgenstein's Tractatus


Spent some time hacking over the weekend. And here's the result: a minimalist interactive version of Wittgenstein's Tractatus.

Screen Shot 2015 09 21 at 19 52 31

The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is a text I've worked with already in the past.

This time I was intrigued by the simple yet super cool typed.js javascript library, which simulates animated typing.

Screen Shot 2015 09 21 at 19 54 12

After testing it out a bit I realised that this approach allows to focus on the text with more attention that having it all displayed at once.

Since the words appear one at a time, it feels more like a verbal dialogue than reading. As a consequence, also the way the meaning of the text gets perceived changes.

Slower, deeper. Almost like meditating. Try it out here.

Credits

Update January 6, 2022

The source code is available on GitHub: https://github.com/lambdamusic/wittgensteiniana

Cite this blog post:


Michele Pasin. Another experiment with Wittgenstein's Tractatus. Blog post on www.michelepasin.org. Published on Sept. 21, 2015.

Comments via Github:


See also:

2017


paper  Data integration and disintegration: Managing Springer Nature SciGraph with SHACL and OWL

Industry Track, International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC-17), Vienna, Austria, Oct 2017.



paper  Fitting Personal Interpretation with the Semantic Web: lessons learned from Pliny

Digital Humanities Quarterly, Jan 2017. Volume 11 Number 1


2007


paper  PhiloSURFical: browse Wittgensteinʼs Tractatus with the Semantic Web

Wittgenstein and the Philosophy of Information - Proceedings of the 30th International Ludwig Wittgenstein Symposium, Kirchberg, Austria, Aug 2007. pp. 319-335