Yes, the undue focus on the language turn in analytic philosophy has not necessarily been positive. I think the neglect of other ways of reasoning have let to lots of improper conclusions. Your point about physics is apt too. That’s definitely a discipline that incentivizes thinking diagrammatically. At least I found back in my college days that many problems could more easily be solved by moving out of the calculus/tensor/algebra arena of manipulating symbols (really tokens) and into broader diagrams. At a minimum it’d give the proper way to think about manipulating ones symbols. (Say doing change of coordinates for instance) My guess is that Peirce’s background in the hard sciences of physics and chemistry helped him in terms of thinking through practical logic of this sort. Although it is odd that more of the physicists who have entered philosophy haven’t taken these up quite as much. Perhaps due to the expectations especially in analytic philosophy towards linguistic methods. |
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