Wittgenstein’s Creed: Mythology and Axiomatic Systems
Abstract
The paper describes a syntagmatic structure shared by axiomatic systems and creeds. In particular, the structure is based on the repetition of syntagm containing a modal operator (“I believe”), a name, and several descriptions. These syntagms should not be confused with empirical sentences. Rather, drawing on Wittgenstein, they can be compared to hinge statements: linguistic games that determine individual identity and weltbild. The rendering explicit of hinge statements in an axiomatic system generates orthodoxy and heresies, philosophical and political conflicts. The presence of this structure in a subset of religious and scientific discourses implies a bidirectional transfer of values between them. On one hand, it proves that religious discourse can be as rational as philosophical and scientific ones (there is logos in the mythos); on the other hand, axiomatic scientific discourse projects noological categories onto reality, producing a cosmos (there is mythos in the logos). Axiomatic expositions of scientific knowledge use the same modal operators as cosmogonic myths and imply a subject who believes in the resulting cosmology. The expression of these beliefs is not addressed to a transcendent entity; it instead asserts the belonging of the subject to a community based on the socio-semiotic sharing of the credit.
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