He drew on the work of Gottlob Frege, a German logician. Still, the “Tractatus” was revolutionary in its naivety. What, Wittgenstein asked simply, is language? Why and how do the squawks a person makes, and the squiggles they draw, conjure up all that is in the world? Anthony Quinton, a British philosopher, compared his instincts to those of Sir Isaac Newton, who had troubled to ask why stones fall to the ground when others had been content enough to say, “They just do.”
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