6
In Search of Reality
Facts
The Twentieth Century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein famously made the
following statement:
The world is the totality of facts, not of things.
He is not denying that there are things, but the world is dynamic, and all its
objects are involved in relationships with each other at every instant, thereby
giving rise to facts. 1 Prior to Wittgenstein, his mentor Bertrand Russell had
made a similar claim. Not only is all of reality a collection of facts, said Russell,
but these facts consist of propositions which may be expressed in language.
Russell made the additional assertion that facts are what exist: In other words,
if you asked the question “what kinds of things exist in the universe?”, Russell’s
answer would be that it is facts which exist.
How reasonable is it to contend that reality consists of facts? For instance:
At this moment I am sitting at my kitchen table, my tea kettle is whistling,
my cat is stretching, and outside it is snowing. Each of these is a simple fact,
and together they partially constitute my local reality. I say “partially”, because
other facts (or events) are taking place at the same time: For example, my heart
is beating, my computer is charging, my eyes are blinking, and so on. Moreover,
I am listing the facts at a particular level of description. Alternatively, I might
have tried to account for the motion of every molecule in my surroundings,
describing the displacement of each one in space-time. That would have been
a different description of the same facts.
© The Author(s) 2021
C. Pinter, Mind and the Cosmic Order,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50083-2_6
89