Ernest Gellner

Ernest Gellner (9 December 1925 – 5 November 1995) was a British-Czech philosopher and social anthropologist described by *The Daily Telegraph*, when he died, as one of the world's most vigorous intellectuals, and by *The Independent* as a "one-man crusader for critical rationalism". His first book, *Words and Things* (1959), prompted a leader in *The Times* and a month-long correspondence on its letters page over his attack on linguistic philosophy. As the Professor of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method at …