Philosophy
Ludwig Wittgenstein famously used rulers as an example in his discussion of language games in the Philosophical Investigations. He pointed out that the standard meter bar in Paris was the criterion against which all other rulers were determined to be one meter long, but that there was no analytical way to demonstrate that the standard meter bar itself was one meter long. It could only be asserted as one meter as part of a language game.
Read more about this topic: Ruler
Famous quotes containing the word philosophy:
“My philosophy is inverted Platonism: the further a thing is from true being, the purer, the lovelier, the better it is. Living in illusion as a goal!”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“A new philosophy generally means in practice the praise of some old vice.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“When a bachelor of philosophy from the Antilles refuses to apply for certification as a teacher on the grounds of his color I say that philosophy has never saved anyone. When someone else strives and strains to prove to me that black men are as intelligent as white men I say that intelligence has never saved anyone: and that is true, for, if philosophy and intelligence are invoked to proclaim the equality of men, they have also been employed to justify the extermination of men.”
—Frantz Fanon (1925–1961)