Wittgenstein (1889-1951), was a Austrian philosopher primarily in mathematics.  He was however, quite critical of the cult of Reason or ‘Rationalism’.  In his work, ‘Philosophical Investigations’, he identifies the word-games of ‘Science’ as an impediment to truth and understanding.  Various language games for Wittgenstein are ‘tools in a box’.  Each tool can be used to justify our means.  A fraudulent data set.  A partially correct but essentially deceiving graph.  A theory with little proof offered as factual.  The use of ‘experts’ to verify conjecture as immutable truth.  Wittgenstein asks and answers what is science:

‘How many kinds of science are there?....There are countless kinds; countless different kinds of use of all the things we call ‘signs', ‘word’, sentences’….new types of language, new language games, as we may say, come into existence, and others become obsolete and forgotten.’

What Wittgenstein is saying is that if the need demands it, the tools will change it.  The rules of the language game may change, for example a chess piece called the Bishop may be changed to say the ‘priest’ who cannot move indefinitely far, diagonally.  This would make chess less interesting but would not change the ‘rules’ for the other pieces.  So it goes with math and science.  1 + 1 = 2 is a mathematical rule, it cannot equal 3, unless we determine that the ‘+’ sign is no longer one of addition between the two numbers on other side, but something else entirely (maybe it means add an extra one to the answer).  This language game, changes the rules and all of mathematics. 

Wittgenstein articulates that words, symbols and rules have meaning because of the language we apply to them.  Plato and Kant are philosophers who interpret the world of the material and immaterial, using their own language, bound by time, knowledge and culture.  The search for rationality then, is likewise problematic for Wittgenstein.  1 + 1 = 2, seems self-evident, but what if the rules supporting the language game of mathematics were completely altered so that the equation equals 3?  What then of ‘rationality’ and truth?

These may seem like abstract arguments, but they cut to the core of rotten science.  Instead of the scientific method, we have long sentences and complex word structures, attempting more to confuse, then enlighten with proof and clarity.  Dogma replaces investigation and truth.  Global warming, Evolution, Corona and other cults are all evidence of the ‘language games’, Wittgenstein warned about.  He believed that if the basis of any discipline is the ‘use of language’, than when that language is abused, debased, or altered out of all meaning, the discipline in question, must inevitably be degraded and distorted out of all recognition to the truth or reality of existence.