1921: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
Author/Editor: Ludwig Wittgenstein
English translation of Wittegenstein’s book by D. F. Pears & B. F. McGuinness.
This is Wittgenstein’s only full book published in his lifetime. After writing it during WWI, and publishing it in 1921, Wittgenstein concluded that all philosophical problems were resolved.
It was a powerful influence on the Vienna Circle, who used it to develop logical positivism (which Wittgenstein felt was based on a fundamental misreading of his thoughts).
Logical positivism, whatever, Wittgenstein thought of it, spread widely in the world of Western thought. One strand of it, that only scientific knowledge can represent factual knowledge, has been particularly influential—both in inflecting what is known to be knowable and as a position against which many current approaches
