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Wittgenstein's Nachlass. The Bergen Electronic Edition (BEE)

WAB is probably best known for the publication of «Wittgenstein's Nachlass. The Bergen Electronic Edition» (BEE, Oxford University Press 2000) and its more recent initiatives to publish the Nachlass open access. BEE was a joint publication by WAB and Oxford University Press and offered on six CDs facsimile as well as normalized and diplomatic text editions of the manuscripts and typescripts of Wittgenstein's philosophical Nachlass. Publication of the edition, which was initially intended to consist of four separate volumes, begun in April 1998. After publication of Volume 2 it was decided to publish one final, complete title. The complete edition was developed for Windows (3.1/3.11, 95/98, NT 4.0, 2000) and released in 2000 on 6 CDs (1 CD with edited Nachlass texts and software, and 5 CDs with facsimile files). The edition was equipped with a range of search and analysis functions. The normalized version of BEE is still available online in the Past Masters series from InteLex Corporation.

BEE was the result of 10 years of research and editorial work by the Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen. It published all the sources and drafts for such important works as the Notebooks (MSS 101-103), the Prototractatus (MS 104), the Tractatus (TSS 202-204), Philosophical Remarks (TS 209), Philosophical Grammar (TS 213, MSS 114-115, MS 140), Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics (TSS 221-222, MSS 117, 121, 124-127 and others), Philosophical Investigations (TS 227 and MS 144), Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology (TSS 229, 232, 244-245), Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology (MSS 137-138, 169-171, 173-174, 176), On Certainty (MSS 172, 174-177), Remarks on Colour (MSS 172-173, 176), The Blue and the Brown Books (TSS 309-310), and Culture and Value (more than 50 different manuscripts). For a detailed concordance of these works and Nachlass sources see Pichler's and Biggs' catalogues (1993).

In addition, BEE published much material that was previously unpublished or widely unknown, such as the legendary Big Typescript (TS 213), the prewar-version of Philosophical Investigations (MS 142, long believed lost, and TSS 220-221), the recently discovered Diary (MS 183), and the two important series of Wittgenstein's «Bände» (MSS 105-122 and 123-138), which mark important stages in the development of i.a. the Philosophical Investigations and all the notebooks from which the «Bände» and other works were compiled.

BEE rendered the Nachlass texts in two separate, but interlinked, versions. The diplomatic version retained a wide range of details from the original, including deletions, overwritings, substitutions, original orthography, spelling mistakes, and so on. The normalized version provided a 'reading' version of the original, in which elements such as deleted and overwritten text are omitted, and spelling is corrected and normalized. In the normalized version, the last variant of alternative readings was rendered by default, while earlier variants are displayed on request.

Unlike paper editions, electronic editions have an inherent flexibility which allows hyper-links for automatic cross-referencing and efficient searching for single words or word combinations in a large number of manuscripts. BEE used FolioViews for its text presentation and retrieval. FolioViews was chosen because it offered a combination of excellent tools for text searching and hyperlinking. Search results could be displayed and navigated in a keyword-in-context list as well as in full text. For the Wittgenstein manuscripts specific search fields had been designed. These allowed searches in certain volumes or manuscript groups, or within Wittgenstein's variant readings, within date ranges, specific languages, Geheimschrift, graphic material, and mathematical notation.

In addition to the edited texts, BEE included digital facsimile images of the entire Nachlass. The edited texts, both in the normalized and the diplomatic versions, were linked with the images on page level. High quality colour photographs were used as a basis for the digital images. The photographs were digitized and stored on Photo-CDs, from which JPEG-compressed versions of the images were produced. The preparation of the electronic facsimiles was done by the Norwegian Computing Centre for the Humanities, now a part of The Centre of Culture, Language and Information Technology, AKSIS (since 2009 "Uni Digital") .

Since 2014, WAB is producing a new digital facsimile of the Wittgenstein Nachlass which is made available open access on the Wittgenstein Source site. Moreover, WAB gives since 2016 interactive open access to all its transcriptions of the Wittgenstein Nachlass on the interactive dynamic presentation (IDP) site. On the semantic faceted search and browsing (SFB) site, WAB offers in addition semantic faceted search and browsing of Wittgenstein metadata, again with a focus on Wittgenstein's philosophical Nachlass. And finally, WAB offers with WiTTFind, a cooperation with the Centrum für Informations- und Sprachverarbeitung an der Ludwig Maximilians Universität München, advanced tools for Nachlass text search.

Work is undertaken to produce a revised BEE.

    Literature on BEE:
  • Huitfeldt, Claus (1994). “Toward a Machine-Readable Version of Wittgenstein’s Nachlaß”. In: Philosophische Editionen. Erwartungen an sie - Wirkungen durch sie. Ed. Hans Gerhard Senger. Beihefte zu editio 6. pp. 37-43.
  • Cripps, Peter & Espen S. Ore (1997). “Elektronisk publisering av Wittgenstein’s Nachlass”. In: Human IT 4/97 (http://etjanst.hb.se/bhs/ith//4-97/pc-eso.htm).
  • Jantschek, Thorsten (1999). „Surfen durch Wittgenstein“. In: Frankfurter Rundschau, 5.1.1999.
  • Krüger, H.W. (1999). “’Wittgenstein’s Nachlass - The Bergen Electronic Edition’”. In: Information Philosophie 3. pp. 46-48.
  • Hrachovec, Herbert (2000). “Wittgenstein on line / on the line”. In: “Fragments”: Views into Wittgenstein research. Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen: http://wab.uib.no/wab_contrib-hh.page.
  • Roser, Andreas (2001). Wittgensteins Nachlass auf CD-ROM. In: Information Philosophie (Dez. 2001). pp. 42-47.
  • McGuinness, Brian (2002). “The other side of silence”. In: Times Literary Supplement 14.6.2002.
  • Pichler, Alois (2002). “Encoding Wittgenstein. Some remarks on Wittgenstein’s Nachlass, the Bergen Electronic Edition, and future electronic publishing and networking”. In: TRANS. Internet-Zeitschrift für Kulturwissenschaften 10 (http://www.inst.at/trans/10Nr/pichler10.htm).
  • Schulte, Joachim (2002). “Wittgenstein’s Nachlass: The Bergen Electronic Edition”. In: Grazer Philosophische Studien 65. pp. 237-246.
  • Soulez, Antonia (2003). Le CD-Rom Wittgenstein: l’histoire du Nachlass. In: Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 1. pp. 107-111.
  • Binder, Thomas & Rudolf Haller (2002). Wittgenstein’s Nachlass: The Bergen Electronic Edition. In: Nachrichten 10. pp. 98-106.
  • Raatzsch, Richard (2003). “Vergleichende Rezension von: (a) L. Wittgenstein, The Bergen Electronic Edition, Oxford UP 1998/99 und (b) L. Wittgenstein, Wiener Ausgabe/Vienna Edition, Band/Volume 11, The Big Typescipt, edited by M. Nedo, Springer 2000”. In: Erkenntnis 59, pp. 129-135.”
  • Bremer, Józef (2003). “Wittgenstein's Nachlass: The Bergen Electronic Edition [Dziela posmiertne Wittgensteina: Bergenskie Wydanie Elektroniczne]”. In: Forum Philosophicum 8. pp. 298-299.
  • Huitfeldt, Claus (2004). “Editorial Principles of Wittgenstein’s Nachlass: The Bergen Electronic Edition”. In: Augmenting Comprehension: Digital Tools and the History of Ideas. Ed. Dino Buzzetti, Giuliano Pancaldi, Harold Short. London: Office for Humanities Communication Publication 17. pp. 113-127.
  • Pichler, Alois (2005). “Wittgenstein’s Nachlass: Situating the Bergen Electronic Edition”. In: Ludwig Wittgenstein and Analytic Philosophy. Ed. M. Stoicheva. Sofia: QUTU 2005. pp. 12-21.
  • Pichler, Alois & O.E. Haugen (2005). “Fra kombinerte utgaver til dynamisk utgivelse: Erfaringer fra edisjonsfilologisk arbeid med Wittgensteins filosofiske skrifter og nordiske middelaldertekster”. In: Læsemåder: Udgavetyper og målgrupper. Ed. P. Dahl, J. Kondrup, K. Kynde. Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzels Forlag. pp. 178-249.
  • Hrachovec, Herbert (2006). “Evaluating the Bergen Electronic Edition”. In: Wittgenstein: The philosopher and his works. Ed. Alois Pichler & Simo Säätelä. Frankfurt a.M.: Ontos. pp. 405-417.
  • De Mul, Jos (2007). “Wittgenstein 2.0: Philosophical Reading and Writing after the Mediatic Turn”. In: Wittgenstein and the Philosophy of Information. Ed. Alois Pichler & Herbert Hrachovec. Frankfurt a.M.: Ontos. pp. 153-179.
  • Stern, David (2007). “Digital Wittgenstein Scholarship: Past, Present and Future”. In: Wittgenstein and the Philosophy of Information. Ed. Alois Pichler & Herbert Hrachovec. Frankfurt a.M.: Ontos. pp. 223-238.
  • Pichler, Alois (2010). “Towards the New Bergen Electronic Edition”. In: Wittgenstein After His Nachlass. Edited by Nuno Venturinha. History of Analytic Philosophy Series. pp. 157-172.
  • Stern, David (2010). “Review Article: The Bergen Electronic Edition of Wittgenstein's Nachlass”. In: European Journal of Philosophy 18 (3). pp. 455-467.
  • Stern, David (2011). “On Dialogues - Wittgenstein's Literary Style and Philosophical Methods”. In: Wittgenstein-Vorträge: Annäherungen aus Kunst und Wissenschaft. Ed. Jan Drehmel & Kristina Jaspers. pp. 44-61.
  • Gabler, Hans Walter (2013). “Wittgenstein's Nachlass. The Bergen Electronic Edition”. In: Geschichte der Edition in Skandinavien. Ed. Paula Henrikson & Christian Janss. Berlin: De Gruyter. pp. 167-178.