Minor comment: >It is easy to despair as Wittgenstein did, that science and all philosophies are ultimately closed systems of circular truths. That doesn't se

Minor comment: >It is easy to despair as Wittgenstein did, that science and all philosophies are ultimately closed systems of circular truths. That doesn't seem at all right to me. Apart from the question of which Wittgenstein you're talking about (early, later, possibly mid), I don't think he despaired about either of these things. He seems to have felt that philosophy consists of nothing but various confusions—hardly what our sentence claims—of which it was his and philosophy's job to clear up once and for all and leave behind. But he spent his life vigorously working away at many of them. Often happily and very productively. What despair he felt I think had other sources; he had a very strong ethical/mystical (for want of a better word) sense; also frustration at his own and others' lack of ability to think better. Involving science in that sentence makes no sense at all to me. He was involved with the Vienna Circle logical positivists, hardly despairers about science. Later he often advised his philosophy students to give up philosophy and do something useful to society, like medicine or labouring work, anything. I don't remember any negativity towards science from him, except reminders that some questions aren't scientific questions.