Sign-In
Cart
The Fly in the Bottle: Wittgenstein and the World That Outruns Words
Paperback
Please select the version of book you would like to purchase.
ISBN13: 9798180267115
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Jun 5 2026
Pages: 360
Weight: 1.06
Height: 0.75 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Jun 5 2026
Pages: 360
Weight: 1.06
Height: 0.75 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Ludwig Wittgenstein published a single slim book in his lifetime, announced that it had solved every problem in philosophy, and went off to teach schoolchildren in the Austrian countryside. Then he came back and spent the rest of his life dismantling it. This book follows that astonishing turn, and the one provocation that runs through all of it: that the limits of our language are the limits of our world.
It is a beautiful claim. It is also, this book argues, not quite true. With wit, mischief, and a deep respect for the man he keeps contradicting, the author reads Wittgenstein closely and against the grain. We meet the fly trapped in the bottle, the picture theory and its famous final silence, the language-games and family resemblances of the later years, and philosophy reimagined as a kind of therapy for minds bewitched by their own grammar. And then the book presses on the great thesis until it cracks: through the world that existed long before any word, the experiences that outrun speech, the knowing that arrives before its name, the brain that thinks without sentences, octopuses with eight independent minds, and one very real letter in which the author personally begged a living philosopher to abolish the word consciousness.
What emerges is a serious argument wearing a light coat: language is the finest instrument our species has ever built, and it is still too small for the world it tries to hold. The gap between what we can know and what we can say is not a flaw to apologize for. It is the most interesting room in the house, and the door is unlocked.
A funny, humane, genuinely surprising tour of the philosophy of language for anyone who has ever felt a thought too large for the words available to carry it. Wittgenstein, philosophy of language, limits of knowledge, consciousness, meaning, intuition, understanding
What emerges is a serious argument wearing a light coat: language is the finest instrument our species has ever built, and it is still too small for the world it tries to hold. The gap between what we can know and what we can say is not a flaw to apologize for. It is the most interesting room in the house, and the door is unlocked.
A funny, humane, genuinely surprising tour of the philosophy of language for anyone who has ever felt a thought too large for the words available to carry it. Wittgenstein, philosophy of language, limits of knowledge, consciousness, meaning, intuition, understanding
Also from
Kriger, Boris
Freedom from Taxes: Introduction of Automated Payment Transaction Tax and Universal Basic Income
Kriger, Boris
Paperback
$9.60
Why We Don't Fly Like Birds: Gravity, Anatomy, and the Metaphysics of Freedom
Kriger, Boris
Paperback
$28.80
The Morality Trap: How Humanity's Noblest Idea Became Its Most Dangerous Weapon
Kriger, Boris
Paperback
$26.40
Guilty Until Proven Innocent: How Accusation Became the World's Favorite Pastime
Kriger, Boris
Paperback
$28.80
How Knowledge Breaks and Remakes Itself: Thomas Kuhn and the Secret Life of Scientific Change
Kriger, Boris
Paperback
$28.80
A Theory of the Cinematic Masterpiece in the Generative Era: Temporal Sovereignty, the Carriers of Density, and Why Technical Progress Makes Art Deare
Kriger, Boris
Kriger, Peter
Halushko, Denys
Paperback
$13.20
Absurd Faith for an Absurd World: The Tertullian Paradox in the Age of Unreason
Kriger, Boris
Paperback
$17.20
The Law of Imperative Uncertainty: Why Any Complex World Requires Uncertainty
Kriger, Boris
Paperback
$23.88
Foundations of Intellectual Substrate Mining: A Methodology for Extracting Formal Laws from Raw Wisdom
Kriger, Boris
Paperback
$28.80
Spinoza, Evolution, and the Model Trap: Why We Cannot Perceive Reality Directly
Kriger, Boris
Paperback
$26.40
Irrational Reason and Rational Faith: Pascal and the Structural Limits of Rationality
Kriger, Boris
Paperback
$22.56
The Dawn of Shared Intelligence: How Autonomous Technology Will Reshape Civilization
Kriger, Boris
Paperback
$28.80
Also in
Logic
The Fallacy Detective: Thirty-Eight Lessons on How to Recognize Bad Reasoning
Bluedorn, Nathaniel
Bluedorn, Hans
Paperback
$35.00
True Facts That Sound Like Bull$#*t: 500 Insane-But-True Facts That Will Shock and Impress Your Friends 1
Carley, Shane
Paperback
$12.30
The Thinking Toolbox: Thirty-Five Lessons That Will Build Your Reasoning Skills
Bluedorn, Nathaniel
Bluedorn, Hans
Paperback
$35.00
Mastering Logical Fallacies: The Definitive Guide to Flawless Rhetoric and Bulletproof Logic
Withey, Michael
Paperback
$16.14
Walden - On Walden Pond - Life in the Woods - The Transcendentalist Masterpiece
Thoreau, Henry David
Paperback
$16.24
True Facts That Sound Like Bull$#*t: 500 Insane-But-True Facts That Will Shock and Impress Your Friends
Carley, Shane
Hardcover
$18.95
The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten: 100 Experiments for the Armchair Philosopher
Baggini, Julian
Paperback
$17.10
The Foundations of Arithmetic: A Logico-Mathematical Enquiry into the Concept of Number
Frege, Gottlob
Paperback
$30.00
Logically Fallacious: The Ultimate Collection of Over 300 Logical Fallacies (Academic Edition)
Bennett, Bo
Hardcover
$47.45
Socratic Logic: Edition 3.1: A Logic Text Using Socratic Method, Platonic Questions, & Aristotelian Principles
Kreeft, Peter
Hardcover
$63.00
The Art of Logical Thinking: Inductive, Deductive and Hypothetical Reasoning and the Use of Syllogisms and Fallacies
Atkinson, William Walker
Paperback
$11.23
Logically Fallacious: The Ultimate Collection of Over 300 Logical Fallacies (Academic Edition)
Bennett, Bo
Paperback
$28.45
Good Reasoning Matters!: A Guide to Critical Thinking in a Digital Age, Sixth Edition
Groarke, Leo
Carozza, Linda
Tindale, Christopher W.
Paperback
$104.93
The Power of Critical Thinking: Effective Reasoning about Ordinary and Extraordinary Claims
Vaughn, Lewis
Paperback
$154.49
Nonsense: Red Herrings, Straw Men and Sacred Cows: How We Abuse Logic in Our Everyday Language
Gula, Robert J.
Paperback
$11.40
Deleuze's Philosophy of Time and Logic: Kant, Bergson, and the Labyrinth of the Continuum
Paetsch, Charles John
Hardcover
$172.50
Swirling Symmetry: Thoughts and Images on Mathematics, Motion & Pattern
Coleman, Sandra DeLozier
Hardcover
$23.70
The Critical Thinking Toolkit: Your Guide to Success in Learning, Thinking and Writing at University
Cooke, Belinda
Morris, Laurence
Beesley, Paula
Paperback
$35.00
The Duck That Won the Lottery: 100 New Experiments for the Armchair Philosopher
Baggini, Julian
Paperback
$22.00
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Chiron Academic Press - The Original Authoritative Edition)
Wittgenstein, Ludwig
Paperback
$9.13
The Critical Thinking Toolkit: Your Guide to Success in Learning, Thinking and Writing at University
Cooke, Belinda
Morris, Laurence
Beesley, Paula
Hardcover
$58.80
Master Your Mind: Critical-Thinking Exercises and Activities to Boost Brain Power and Think Smarter
Danesi, Marcel
Paperback
$15.19
Gateway to the Stoics: Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, Epictetus's Enchiridion, and Selections from Seneca's Letters
Epictetus
Seneca
Aurelius, Marcus
Paperback
$17.10
With All Your Mind: A Course on Logic and Argument for the Christian Classroom
Finkbeiner, Brad Paul
Paperback
$23.99
How to Think about the Great Ideas: From the Great Books of Western Civilization
Adler, Mortimer
Paperback
$49.35
One: Being an Investigation Into the Unity of Reality and of Its Parts, Including the Singular Object Which Is Nothingness
Priest, Graham
Hardcover
$166.75
The Annotated Gödel: A Reader's Guide to his Classic Paper on Logic and Incompleteness
Prince, Hal
Paperback
$11.64
Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Professional and Personal Life
Paul, Richard
Elder, Linda
Hardcover
$70.00
Critical Reasoning: A Romp through the Foothills of Logic for the Complete Beginner
Talbot, Marianne
Paperback
$27.59
The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Royal Collector's Edition) (Case Laminate Hardcover with Jacket)
Smith, Adam
Hardcover
$62.49
Good Thinking: Why Flawed Logic Puts Us All at Risk and How Critical Thinking Can Save the World
Grimes, David Robert
Paperback
$17.05
Autonomy, Consciousness, and Personhood: A Primer for the Public Dialogue on Abortion
Bujno, Stephen
Hardcover
$54.15
Playing God with Emerging Technologies: How to Avoid the Traps of Techno-Optimism and Techno-Pessimism
Mizrahi, Moti
Hardcover
$165.00
Stoic Quotes: 365 Daily Reflections & Thoughts of Wisdom to Strengthen your Perspective.
Harris, Tate
Paperback
$12.34