In the rarefied world of Wittgenstein scholarship it is little short of astonishing: an untapped, lost archive of original material which provides fresh insights into the utterly brilliant but undeniably troubled mind of a man who could lay claim to being the 20th century's pre-eminent philosopher.
The Cambridge academic Prof Arthur Gibson revealed on Tuesday that he had spent much of the past three years working his way through an archive of Ludwig Wittgenstein material which disappeared in the chaos of the second world war.
The archive, around 170,000 words plus mathematical equations, provides fresh insights into the philosopher's mind and also shines a fascinating light on the complex relationship he had with the man who, as amanuensis, put most of the words on to paper – his young male lover Francis Skinner.
Gibson recalled when he first opened the archive: "I was just stunned. It was astonishing because it's a whole archive, never seen before and most of it entirely new. It provides an insight into his thought processes – you're almost peering into his mind."
Wittgenstein dictated most of the archive to Skinner and it shows just how close the two were. Indeed, it was Skinner's untimely death at 29 which led to the archive being lost in the first place. It was 1941 and Skinner was, not for the first time, ill with polio and taken into hospital in Cambridge for treatment. At about the same time, hundreds of other patients were brought in because of heavy bombing on a nearby RAF base. In the confusion, Skinner was left in a corridor, forgotten for about for 16 hours. He died seven days later with the distraught older man by his side.
Skinner's death "provoked just about a nervous breakdown" in Wittgenstein, said Gibson. They had lived together, holidayed together and at one stage learned Russian together with the grand plan of emigrating to the Soviet Union and become farmers or medics.
In his grief, the philosopher more or less shoved the archive in the post to one of his other students, where it remained, hidden away and unexplored until today, almost 60 years after Wittgenstein's death on 29 April 1951.
It has some eye-popping elements, not least the only known handwritten version of Wittgenstein's Brown Book – notes from his Cambridge lectures in the mid-1930s. There are an additional 60 pages of manuscript for the Brown Book with a revised opening and other changes.
Gibson also believes that a pinkish Norwegian school exercise book in the archive, which has a complete and previously unknown narrative, may in fact be a missing Wittgenstein gem – something talked about but never seen. "This may or may not be the missing item called the Pink Book or Yellow Book that scholars have long been hoping for." There is also a series of thousands of mathematical calculations in which Wittgenstein examines Fermat's little theorem. "It's an extraordinary, even bizarre, and yet original series of calculations," said Gibson.
That the archive's rich seams have been unmined for all these years is down to circumstance more than anything. It was given to the Mathematical Association by its former president Reuben Goodstein in 1976 but, lacking professional archivists, the MA did not really appreciate what it had. In more recent years, the archive was handed by the MA to Trinity College to investigate – a huge job eventually undertaken by Gibson.
The material will add much to the knowledge of a man who was as eccentric as he was brilliant. For example, it had previously been assumed Skinner was one of a number of students taking notes, but Gibson can show that he was not just the chief scribe – he was in-house partner and co-editor, far more important to Wittgenstein's philosophy than previously thought.
Much of the dictation may have been made from the deckchair Wittgenstein sat on in his otherwise empty – apart from a heater – room at Trinity. "He was very austere, yes, although it was a bit of a fetish," said Gibson, who is now dotting the i's and crossing the t's on his research, which will be published in a book within the year.
For Gibson, it has been something of a labour of love because of his strong links with Wittgenstein. As an undergraduate at Cambridge he was taught by two of the great man's most distinguished students, Elizabeth Anscombe and Peter Geach.
"The archive shows that unpredicted and new revolutionary matters still await us in Wittgenstein's philosophy and scientific knowledge that we incorrectly think we already understand," said Gibson.