Wittgenstein’s Ladder: The Coming Irrelevance of Knowledge Managers

In 1920, the brilliant Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein abandoned philosophy after having written what he felt was the ultimate analysis of how language and meaning work (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1922). He first became a primary school teacher, but quarrelled with his colleagues and some of the parents, and turned to gardening. It was nine years before he just as suddenly decided to return to philosophy, taking up a fellowship at Cambridge University, declaring that he had got it wrong the first time round. He spent the next twenty-two years quarrelling with students and colleagues and working on his next work, Philosophical Investigations (1953).

This article appeared as a chapter in Rethinking Knowledge edited by Kim Sbarcea (Lexis-Nexis Australia, 2002)

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Posted by edgar on 01/07/01 at 02:30 PM | Categories: KM Competencies | Permalink