Blackwell Reference Online

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(Übersicht) Wittgenstein's use of this term and its cognates has been variously rendered (e.g., as ‘survey’ or ‘surview’), and this has cloaked the pervasiveness and importance of the concept in his work. The need for surveyability (Übersichtlichkeit) of first principles was announced by Frege. But Wittgenstein's idea that an overview of grammar provides a remedy for philosophical confusion is inspired more by Hertz, who held that problems concerning concepts like force are not to be answered by providing new scientific information or definitions, but to be dissolved by a clearer understanding of existing information and definitions (Mechanics, Introd.). Boltz-mann suggests, furthermore, that such dissolution is to be achieved by a system in which the analogies or models that underlie science are presented in a surveyable fashion (Physics 5–6, 75, 167).Wittgenstein first introduced the term in the context of methodological reflections on anthropology (GB 130–3). He claimed that the collection of facts concerning rituals around the world in Frazer's Golden Bough provides not the genetic explanation of the King of Nemi ritual which Frazer sought, but instead a different kind of illuminating synopsis of the data. He contrasts the method of ‘developmental hypothesis’ with two other ways of assembling the data, namely providing a ‘schema’, and arranging the facts in a ‘perspicuous representation’. ... log in or subscribe to read full text