I I Sociology of Science, Rule Following and Forms of Life
facebook.com I DAVID STERN SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE, RULE FOLLOWING AND FORMS OF LIFE 1 . WITTGENSTEIN ON SCIENCE : "THE POINT IS THAT "'OBEYING A RULE" IS A PRACTICE"' Ludwig Wittgenstein was trained as a scientist and an engineer. He received a diploma in mechanical engineering from the Technische Hochschule in Charlot- tenburg, Berlin, in 1906, after which he did several years of research on aero- nautics before turning to the full-time study of logic and philosophy . Hertz, Boltzmann, Mach, Weininger, and William James, all important influences on Wittgenstein, are authors whose work was both philosophical and scientific . The relationship between everyday life, science, and philosophy, is a central concern throughout the course of his writing . He regarded philosophy, properly con- ducted, as an autonomous activity, a matter of clarifying our understanding of language, or investigating grammar . Wittgenstein thought philosophy should state the obvious as a way of disabusing us of the desire to formulate philosophi- cal theories of meaning, knowledge, language, or science, and was deeply opposed to the naturalist view that philosophy is a form of science . In his later work, Wittgenstein rejected systematic approaches to understanding language and knowledge . Wittgenstein's answer to the Socratic question about the nature of knowledge is that it has no nature, no essence, and so it is a mistake to think one can give a single systematic answer : If I was asked what knowledge is, I would list items of knowledge and add "and such- like." There is no common element to be found in all of them, because there isn't one .
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