The Comparison Between Quine’s And Wittgenstein’s Holism

As a buzz word of contemporary philosophy, holism not only highly appears in the discussion of Linguistic philosophy、scientific philosophy、 epistemology, but also becomes a hot discussion in the field of technical philosophy. In this paper, the scientific and philosophic background about the formation of both quince and Wittgenstein’s holism is delivered, with much attention putting on the crisis and revolution of physics in the late19th century to the early20th century、 the characteristic of the scientific philosophy in the first half of the2oth century. Then we put the main focus on the Quine’s holism, which we consider his thought not only as the respond to the great revolution of natural science, but also an answer to the puzzledom philosophic theory like logic empiricism might face.As it has been found out, Quine on the one hand touched and even oversaw the scientific development of the century; on the other hand, due to his criticism on the two dogmatics, his theory also gained great attention among the English and American philosophies, which gives a big stroke to the logic empiricism,and also became the important reason for the claps of the theory.We also get our hand into the analysis of the post years of Wittgenstein’stheory. In the late year’s of his study, Wittgenstein realized that rather than in a isolation state, the propositions are formed as a interdependent system. For each proposition, only when it is within the system can it gained the epistemological meaning.He bases his theory on the following:first, vocabulary are meant to be used. If sentences or propositions don’t have the realistic bases, it will be a meaningless task; second, all proposition are derived from the life form and world prospect, which gives birth to the words and propositions; third, There is a interdependentship among lives, and people insist on the theory that propositions form a system,of whose holistic characteristic and function structure serve as the foundation of human congnition.According to this point, there is some similarity between Wittgenstein’s holistic theory and Quin’s, both of whose theoy contribute a great deal to break the traditional persuasion for thinking frame like oneness, Definiteness and immutability. However, there is a big difference when it comes to the theory orientation and demonstration style.Fist of all, the two base their theories on different ideology, and the influence are far from the same; Second, Quine mainly delivers his thought by way of thorough demonstration, while Wittgenstein pictured his holism through the discription of the linguistic practices of different lifestyle; third, when holism contradicts to the empiricism,Wittgenstein prefers to explain it according to the practice theory, while Quine, on the other hand, is in favor of the pragmatic standard.