ABSTRACT
In thinking be simple. (Tao te Ching) The early philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) was inspired by the writings of Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell. The work of this trio of thinkers forms the stem from which twentieth-century analytic philosophy derives. Wittgenstein's particular influence first showed itself in Russell's 1918 lectures 'The Philosophy of Logical Atomism: which were, Russell said, 'very largely concerned with explaining certain ideas which I learnt from my friend and former pupil Ludwig Wittgenstein'. Those ideas received their mature form in Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921). The Vienna Circle philosophers studied this work closely and adopted some of its leading motifs. Rudolf Carnap has been perhaps the most influential of those who initially came under the book's spell. His writings in turn helped shape the position of W. V. Quine, the pivotal American philosopher of the second half of the century.
