Wittgenstein, Quine And Logical Positivism

This is a work in the history of twentieth century philosophy of language. In it Iexamine a tradition of logical empiricism that began in Cambridge in the work ofWittgenstein and Russell before becoming the dominant approach to philosophy in theearly to mid twentieth century. Begin with Wittgenstein's TractatusLogico-Philosophicus, I trace the rise of logical positivism. And then it is Quine whocriticized the two dogmas of empiricism and left logical positivism to an awkwardsituation. Since then logical positivism became to fall. In the closing section I try to putQuine's theory with late Wittgenstein's philosophical points together to see whetherthere are similarities in their theories which can help explain the inevitable trend of thefall of logical positivism.