ABSTRACT
UNFORTUNATELY, the interest which Wittgenstein showed in the genesis of meaning has not been widely shared by other recent philosophers. Quite often indeed such an interest is expolicitly ruled out of court and is stigmatized as 'the genetic fallacy'. Admittedly, of course, it is a mistake to suppose that if one has shown that A is derived from a, then A is 'nothing but' a. But this is so elementary that few biologists are likely to need philosophers to remind them against it. It was after all not Huxley, but Wilberforce, who was tempted to conclude that a demonstration that man was evolutionarily derived from the monkey implied that man was no more than a monkey. Scientists are certainly sufficiently aware of the dangers of such arguments to be on their guard against them, although they of course may still be advanced from time to time by inadvertence. But scientists know also that the true nature of, for instance, an Ascidian would be almost impossible to guess if one did not examine its embryonic stages and investigate its genesis. It is very difficult indeed to believe that similar types of thought would fail to be valuable if applied to the analysis of linguistic usage.
