Dear Pedro,

You write: “Wittgenstein's *Tractatus* was published in English in 1922,
thus many years prior to Keynes's criticisms of Tinbergen”

Am currently struggling with this history myself, so would welcome
comment/criticism. Rather contra your suggestion I am sympathetic to what
seems surely to be Russell’s view,  that the whole school around the later
Wittgenstein was misguided in an anti-scientific way.  Plus I am sympathetic
to Carabelli’s reconstruction, in which the later Wittgenstein school has
its roots in the very early work of Wittgenstein’s supporter (and probably
mentor?) Keynes.

I have (at least!) a couple of puzzles:

1)  Russell rejects Keynes’ TP as anti-scientific in HK (1948) - but in very
mild terms, when contrasted with his comments on the Wittgenstein school. 
Russell and Keynes apparently broke personally rather acrimoniously in 1915,
but perhaps in 1948 Russell’s treatment of (recently dead) Keynes was in
part tempered by lingering affection from their youthful friendship?

2)  Keynes “Theory of Probability” seems massively inconsistent as a piece
of work.  Much stress is laid on the non-numerical, ordinal nature of most
probability judgements early in the book, and then much space to developing
a (contradictory) formal system which is only meaningful for numerical
probabilities.  So far I only found use of the word “some” bearing on this
matter, which seems inadequate in the face of the scale of inconsistency
involved.  Perhaps I missed something?

Best Wishes

Rob Tye