Some Reflections about Wittgenstein´s Bezugssystem

Only a few months before his death, Wittgenstein
invited us to imagine "that some propositions, of the form
of empirical propositions, were hardened and functioned
as channels for such empirical propositions as were not
hardened but fluid�; nevertheless he warned "this relation
altered with time, in that fluid propositions hardened, and
hard ones became fluid� (OC 96). Those hardened
propositions provide a certainty which is "like a mighty
force whose point of application does not move, and so no
work is accomplished by it� (Z 402). There are many things
that seem to be fixed, things which are removed from the
traffic: they are "so to speak shunted onto an unused
siding� (OC 210). Those things just give "our way of
looking at things, and our researches, their form� (OC
211). Maybe they were once disputed; but perhaps, for
unthinkable ages, they have belonged to the scaffolding of
our thoughts.