Abstract

In a note from 1950 Wittgenstein remarks how little “I can’t figure him out” resembles “I can’t figure this mechanism out.” He suggests that what the former means is roughly that one cannot foresee this person’s behaviour with the “same certainty” as with those with whom one “does know [one’s] way about.” Of course a good mechanic also knows his way about his machine and the powerful hold that mechanism exercises on the cognitive imagination owes much to the sense that practical insight into how things actually work brings us into an especially intimate relation with reality. It is an intimacy which allows us to predict future states of the machine, to control its output, prevent breakdowns and human disaster.