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  1. 1889-1951. Austrian philosopher. Tractatus
  2. Logico-Philosophicus 1922 postulated the
  3. `picture theory' of language: that words
  4. represent things according to social
  5. agreement. He subsequently rejected this
  6. idea, and developed the idea that usage was
  7. more important than convention. The picture
  8. theory said that it must be possible to break
  9. down a sentence into `atomic propositions'
  10. whose elements stand for elements of the real
  11. world. After he rejected this idea, his later
  12. philosophy developed a quite different,
  13. anthropological view of language: words are
  14. used according to different rules in a
  15. variety of human activities - different
  16. `language games' are played with them. The
  17. traditional philosophical problems arise
  18. through the assumption that words (like
  19. `exist' in the sentence `Physical objects do
  20. not really exist') carry a fixed meaning with
  21. them, independent of context. He taught at
  22. Cambridge University, England, in the 1930s
  23. and 1940s. Philosophical Investigations 1954
  24. and On Certainty 1969 were published
  25. posthumously.
  26.