Quinton defends Oxonian Grice versus outsider Gellner

-- by JLS
-- for the GC

Quinton wrote in his review of Ernest Gellner, "Words and things" in the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science:

"Both its style and its content show it
to a pamphlet rather than a fully-fledged
philosophical treatise."

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"It is written in a none too orderly way."

"Its sociological excursions are marginally relevant."

"Mr. Gellner does not exert himself to identify
very clearly the precise object of his attack;
linguistic philosophy remains to the end a
pretty shapeless affair".

"He relies on stray journalistic lettings-down
of hair."

When he analyses a special case, the result is

"frivolous (...

"uses but not sentences refer"

(I have a terrible feeling I may have gotten the
phrasing of this latter idea wrong)")"

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