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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books The Analytic Turn in Early Twentieth-century Philosophy 4- Conclusion: The Varieties of Analysis What conclusions can be drawn from these studies of analysis in early analytic philosophy and phenomenology? At the very least, they should correct some common misunderstandings.

It is frequently assumed that ‘analysis’ just means decomposition, and that it is analysis in this sense, particularly in the form of conceptual analysis, that is characteristic of analytic philosophy. But as we have seen, there are many other forms of analysis in play, even if they combine with decompositional analysis in intricate ways in actual practices of analysis.

Moreover, the decompositional conception and its centrality in reductive projects was subjected to criticism at just the time that analytic philosophy began to establish itself as a tradition in the early 1930s. Distinctive forms of analysis did indeed emerge in analytic philosophy and phenomenology.

In my view, the most important of these was Frege’s introduction of quantificational logical analysis (a type of transformative analysis, extending function-argument analysis from mathematics to logic), which was further developed and pursued by Russell, most notably, in the theory of descriptions.

Not only did this open up new possibilities of philosophical analysis (reductive, eliminative and explicatory) but the issues raised by its use also set much of the agenda in the development of analytic philosophy. As far as phenomenology is concerned, the introduction of the method of reduction was what Husserl himself saw as his breakthrough.

Aimed at identifying and clarifying the presuppositions in our everyday and scientific thinking, this can be regarded as the central characteristic of the parallel analytic turn that took place in giving rise to phenomenology. Moore’s and Russell’s rebellion against British idealism was a significant moment in the development of analytic philosophy, but it was not significant because it introduced a new form of analysis.

On the contrary, it simply took over an existing, decompositional conception, in a particularly crude form. It was significant because it marked the start of a sustained attempt to follow through the implications of putting that conception to work, in the context of rejecting idealism.