Wittgenstein’s “machines-as-symbols” are considered with respect to their historical sources and their symbolic and logical nature. Among these sources and precursors, along with Leonardo’s drawings of machines, there are illustrated “machine books” (theatra machinarum), a kind of book published in the period from the 16th to the 18th centuries which consist of pictures and descriptions of a variety of mechanical devices. Most probably, these books were one of Wittgenstein’s inspirations for his view of machines as components of language-games (not just for his earlier philosophy of depicting symbols in TLP). The picture of homo volans in Vrančić’s (Verantius) machine book (1615/16) possessed by Wittgenstein is taken as an example. In particular, homo volans is shown to contain patterns of logical laws and rules and to be abstractly interpretable as a logical symbol. A machine (or its picture), taken as a symbol, is shown (a) to be a precondition of a meaningful “overview” of a mechanical work (including logical formalisms) that exceeds the limits of decidability; (b) to possess causal features if causality is understood teleologically and in a deeper sense of a “binding” life.

维特根斯坦的“作为符号的机器”是根据它们的历史来源及其符号和逻辑性质来考虑的。在这些来源和先驱中，除了列奥纳多的机械图外，还有插图“机械书”（theatra machinarum），这是一种出版于 16 至 18 世纪的书籍，由各种图片和描述组成。机械装置。最有可能的是，这些书是维特根斯坦将机器视为语言游戏的组成部分的观点的灵感之一（不仅仅是他早期在 TLP 中描绘符号的哲学）。以维特根斯坦拥有的弗兰契奇 (Verantius) 机器书 (1615/16) 中的volans 人图片为例。特别是，同质飞鱼星显示包含逻辑规律和规则的模式，并且可以抽象地解释为逻辑符号。一台机器（或其图片），作为一个符号，被证明（a）是一个超出可判定性限制的机械工作（包括逻辑形式）的有意义的“概述”的先决条件；(b) 如果因果关系是从目的论上理解的，并在“绑定”生活的更深层次上理解，则具有因果特征。