Metaphysical Animals: How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life

by Clare Mac Cumhaill

Wittgenstein: Suppose that for some people counting were learnt first as a sort of poetry, and then later used as a way of measuring fields. You see someone pacing in a field. What makes you say he is measuring and not doing poetry? Student 1: You find out if he is counting? Wittgenstein: You don’t know his language. Student 2: You see if his pace is a constant unit? Wittgenstein: That might be a dance. Wasfi Hijab: You study their lives. Wittgenstein: Yes, you need the context of a lot of other things they do. Take any such phenomenon as comparing colours, measuring time, comparing lengths, playing games. These are specific. “I’ll show you things we humans do.”[159]