Wittgenstein 66

Consider for example the proceedings that we call "games". I mean board-games, card-games, ball-games, Olympic games, and so on. What is common to them all? -- Don't say: "There must be something common, or they would not be called 'games' "-but look and see whether there is anything common to all. -- For if you look at them you will not see something that is common to all, but similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that. To repeat: don't think, but look! --

Look for example at board-games, with their multifarious relationships.

Now pass to card-games; here you find many correspondences with the first group, but many common features drop out, and others appear.

When we pass next to ball-games, much that is common is retained, but much is lost.-- Are they all 'amusing'? Compare chess with noughts and crosses. Or is there always winning and losing, or competition between players? Think of patience. In ball games there is winning and losing; but when a child throws his ball at the wall and catches it again, this feature has disappeared. Look at the parts played by skill and luck; and at the difference between skill in chess and skill in tennis.

Think now of games like ring-a-ring-a-roses; here is the element of amusement, but how many other characteristic features have disappeared! sometimes similarities of detail.

And we can go through the many, many other groups of games in the same way; can see how similarities crop up and disappear.

And the result of this examination is: we see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and cries-crossing: sometimes overall similarities.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• wittgenstein
• games

[syafii]

W's family resemblance concepts... AND?

[ebb1]

The picture is a set of shadows of me, bouncing a ball, layered and out of sync in an interesting way so it looks like I'm playing a ball game.

The sound started with a recording of a reading of the passage, which I cut on every syllable, and copied five times, and ultimately reversed. Then I re-recorded myself mimicking those backwards syllabic sounds, reversed that, and turned it back into something resembling English language.

[corryton]

This is good!

[ebb1]

Thanks!!!

[corryton]

You're welcome. I have nothing to speak of right now, so I will remain silent. :-)