1.2 The world
consists of facts.
Facts are presumably what is
represented by true
statements. This is fairly clear for ordinary cases,
in natural language: Copper is a metal, copper conducts electricity,
London is the capital of Great Britain etc.
But it is not very clear for other
cases, and anyway one may ask: Why not rather
events or
processes, since these involve time in some sense, which seems
involved in all real
things, or why not, if one wants to get
abstract or
general, why not of structures or
classes of things,
perhaps of some (natural) kinds?
In brief, what W. seems to do here is
(1) to analyze the world as if it is what corresponds to statements, and
(2) without considering terms, and indeed what these may stand for, such
as things, events, structures, or processes, for W. seems to relegate
these under "facts".
It seems to me that this is too
simplistic an analysis.