If anything, the author could have gone into Wittgenstein more, but she did cover a lot of ground... My stab at it:
Before Wittgenstein philosophers were obsessed with the factual nature of words and tried mapping everything correctly (logically) with the natural world. Except, they were failing.
Wittgenstein came in and basically said language was never designed to represent reality, but rather is what emerges from the use cases between people. Communication is a transaction ("game" in his words), and not some mathematical or logical construct. It may have such properties, and the people and the context are all real, so reality is involved, but language is not a direct output, nor does it need to directly correlate to resist contradiction or paradox -- which are abound in philosophy.
Except, for those who speak it, language is their reality. Those who cannot overcome their own immersion can never see past their own words, which sums up much of his opposition. They are all correct in their world and in their words... except Wittgenstein was talking about how words and worlds worked.
In short, words can be arbitrary, and are constrained by the goal to communicate and transact. This exact phenomenon which Wittgenstein described as what we are doing is the phenomena England is describing as what biological systems are doing.
It's all Dissipative Adaptation, with language being the unique construct for every such system that emerges and sustains it all.
Before Wittgenstein philosophers were obsessed with the factual nature of words and tried mapping everything correctly (logically) with the natural world. Except, they were failing.
Wittgenstein came in and basically said language was never designed to represent reality, but rather is what emerges from the use cases between people. Communication is a transaction ("game" in his words), and not some mathematical or logical construct. It may have such properties, and the people and the context are all real, so reality is involved, but language is not a direct output, nor does it need to directly correlate to resist contradiction or paradox -- which are abound in philosophy.
Except, for those who speak it, language is their reality. Those who cannot overcome their own immersion can never see past their own words, which sums up much of his opposition. They are all correct in their world and in their words... except Wittgenstein was talking about how words and worlds worked.
In short, words can be arbitrary, and are constrained by the goal to communicate and transact. This exact phenomenon which Wittgenstein described as what we are doing is the phenomena England is describing as what biological systems are doing.
It's all Dissipative Adaptation, with language being the unique construct for every such system that emerges and sustains it all.