zaterdag 19 juli 2014

Darwin owns Wittgenstein

"4.1122 The Darwinian theory has no more to do with philosophy than has any other hypothesis of natural science.

4.113 Philosophy limits the disputable sphere of natural science." (Wittgenstein, Tractatus)


 "67. I can think of no better expression to characterize these
similarities than 'family resemblances'; for the various resemblances
between members of a family: build, features, colour of eyes, gait,
temperament, etc. etc. overlap and criss-cross in the same way.—
And I shall say: 'games' form a family.
And for instance the kinds of number form a family in the same way.
Why do we call something a 'number'? Well, perhaps because it
has a—direct—relationship with several things that have hitherto
been called number; and this can be said to give it an indirect relationship
to other things we call the same name. And we extend our concept
of number as in spinning a thread we twist fibre on fibre. And
the strength of the thread does not reside in the fact that some one
fibre runs through its whole length, but in the overlapping of many
fibres.
But if someone wished to say: "There is something common to all
these constructions—namely the disjunction of all their common
properties"—I should reply: Now you are only playing with words.
One might as well say: 'Something runs through the whole thread—
namely the continuous overlapping of those fibres'." (Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations)

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