Illogical omission
From Anne Lawrence Sir: It is amazing that Roger Scruton in his review of the work of Donald Davidson of blessed memory (`The truth about meaning', 20 September) makes no mention of Wittgenstein. His work (not to mention his life) in the first three decades of the past century was as important to philosophy and logic as that of Aristotle,
Thomas Aquinas and that inspired catchall, Spinoza (I am certain Davidson himself would concur with this proposition). Indeed, in many ways, the rest of 20thcentury cutting-edge philosophy is commentary on Wittgenstein's Tractatus logicophilosophicus.
Commentary, of course, the wider and deeper the better, is extremely important — the sociological implications of the Wittgensteinian revolution are barely understood and scarcely researched in Anglo-Saxon culture — and this is what makes Davidson's work so important, and is the reason it will shine on.
Anne Lawrence
Glasgow
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