John Cook Wilson

John Cook Wilson (6 June 1849 – 11 August 1915) was an English philosopher.

Cook was born in Nottingham, the only son of a Methodist minister. After Derby Grammar School, 1862–7, he Wilson went up to Balliol College, Oxford in 1868, where he read both Classics and Mathematics, gaining a 1st in Mathematical Moderations, 1869, 1st in Classical Moderations, 1870, 1st in Mathematics finals, 1871, and a 1st in Literae Humaniores ('Greats') in 1872. (He was, along with H. A. Prichard, one of Oxford's few early twentieth-century philosophers, to have a mathematical background.) Wilson became a Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford in 1874. He was Wykeham Professor of Logic and a Fellow of New College, Oxford, from 1889 until his death. H. A. Prichard and W.D. Ross were among his students.

Mathematics, he said, is the best preparation for logic (Statement and Inference, I : xxxviii). There is an amusing story of how he introduced calculus in a lecture to classically trained undergraduates. At the end of the lecture 'he walked smartly to the door, locked, or pretended to lock, it, and then standing there with his back to it said with decision : 'No one shall leave this room until you all grasp the essentials of this simple matter' (Statement and Inference, I : xv). He had, however, little sympathy with the mathematical logic developed by Bertrand Russell.

Belonging to a generation brought up in the atmosphere of British idealism, he espoused the cause of direct realism. His posthumous collected papers, Statement and Inference, were influential on a generation of Oxford philosophers, including H. H. Price and Gilbert Ryle. He also features prominently in the work of J.L. Austin, John McDowell, and Timothy Williamson. P.F. Strawson's expression, 'the attributive tie', in Individuals (1959, 168) is named 'in memory of Cook Wilson'.

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