Name: Constructions
ISBN: 9780571240883

Michael Frayn

Constructions

Gavin

Book of aphorisms, glorifying unanalysed practice and the majority of the world which is beyond theory. Self-consciously Wittgensteinian (PI), as he declares repeatedly in the preface. This declaration is a shame, because it means that his nice-enough notes on perception, knowledge and emotion are vastly, vastly overshadowed by the giant spectre he has called up; it's PI without the thought experiments and devastating reductios. But a nice supplement to it:

  Look at your hand. Its structure does not match the structure of assertions, the structure of facts. Your hand is continuous. Assertions and facts are discontinuous.... You lift your index finger half an inch; it passes through a million facts. Look at the way your hand goes on and on, while the clock ticks, and the sun moves a little further across the sky.



(The brutal conservative relativism underpinning PI is, needless to say, not addressed either.)

Constructions

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