Wittgenstein: sôbre a explicação estética e a explicação científica causal

Abstract

Wittgenstein’s ideas on scientific and aesthetic explanations are examined and two main grammatical differences between these sorts of explanation are indicated: (i) in the first sort, the analysis of the situations is carried out in an extent not admitted in the second; (ii) there is greater agreement on the contexts of the first sort than on the contexts of the second. By means of two examples, it is shown that these differences may perhaps be illusory: the first example being a proposed “atomistic-operational” interpretation for the lattice-theoretical approach to Mechanics and the second being picked out from Oriental aesthetics.