ABSTRACT

Academics often exhort their students to declare their theoretical perspectives, so it is right that I should declare mine before plunging into the difficult topic of 'theory'. Prior to becoming a landscape architect, I studied philosophy as an undergraduate. I was taught by Wittgensteinians and took an optional course in Wittgenstein's philosophy of language. As a result I carry around with me certain ways of thinking, particularly about words and meanings, which are, so to speak, tools in my theoretical toolbox. The most useful of these is the idea that the meaning of a word is to be found by considering its use. If we encounter a word which puzzles us, the way to understand it is to look at the many and various ways that the term is used.