> Bertrand Russell was a wonderful man, but I still smile when I think of the Principia and the essay he wrote nine years after Godel blew it up
I purposefully put them both up there! Russell was wrong (and, on a personal level, his atheistic slant profoundly annoys me), but he had a coherent and laudable plan -- he was the logical positivists' spearhead. Godel, of course, blew that whole plan up, but it was a plan nonetheless.
> If the GP thinks Wittgenstein is a vandal I wonder what he makes of Derrida and the other French lunatics;
In line with the analytic tradition, I wasn't much exposed to the "French lunatics" (thankfully). Nietzsche was bad enough†.
† I actually quite like some of Nietzsche, but the prose is atrocious.
I purposefully put them both up there! Russell was wrong (and, on a personal level, his atheistic slant profoundly annoys me), but he had a coherent and laudable plan -- he was the logical positivists' spearhead. Godel, of course, blew that whole plan up, but it was a plan nonetheless.
> If the GP thinks Wittgenstein is a vandal I wonder what he makes of Derrida and the other French lunatics;
In line with the analytic tradition, I wasn't much exposed to the "French lunatics" (thankfully). Nietzsche was bad enough†.
† I actually quite like some of Nietzsche, but the prose is atrocious.