Quote of the Day: logic and understanding

[timelets]

89. For logic seemed to have a peculiar depth — a universal significance. Logic lay, it seemed, at the foundation of all the sciences. For logical investigation explores the essence of all things. It seeks to see to the foundation of things, and shouldn’t concern itself whether things actually happen in this or that way. —– It arises neither from an interest in the facts of nature, nor from a need to grasp causal connections, but from an urge to understand the foundations, or essence, of everything empirical.

Not, however, as if to this end we had to hunt out new facts; it is, rather, essential to our investigation that we do not seek to learn anything new by it. We want to understand something that is already in plain view. For this is what we seem in some sense not to understand.

- L.W. Phil. Inv. 4th ed. p. 46-47.