From Publishers Weekly
In October 1946, philosopher Karl Popper arrived at Cambridge to lecture at
a seminar hosted by his legendary colleague Ludwig Wittgenstein. It did not
go well: the men began arguing, and eventually, Wittgenstein began waving a
fire poker toward Popper. It lasted scarcely 10 minutes, yet the debate has
turned into perhaps modern philosophy's most contentious encounter, largely
because none of the eyewitnesses could agree on what happened. Did
Wittgenstein physically threaten Popper with the poker? Did Popper lie
about it afterward? BBC journalists Edmonds and Eidinow use the controversy
as a springboard to probe the whys and whats of these two great thinkers,
weaving biography, journalism and philosophy to produce one of the year's
most entertaining and intellectually rich books. The authors show that the
debate was a clash at several levels. First, of personalities: each was
"bullying, aggressive, intolerant and self-absorbed"; in other words,
accustomed to winning and unlikely to back down. Second, of class:
Wittgenstein was an Austrian aristocrat, Popper was bourgeoisie (each fled
Vienna to escape Hitler). And third, of ideas: Wittgenstein believed that
philosophy boiled down to nothing more than a series of linguistic puzzles,
while Popper thought philosophy involved real problems that immediately
affected the world at large. Clearly, the stakes were high for both men in
that lecture hall especially because their common mentor, the aging icon
Bertrand Russell, was also in attendance. The debate thus took on the
character of a succession for the throne. Tightly constructed and
extraordinarily well written, this is a marvelous blend of lay and academic
scholarship. It has every chance of becoming a classic of its kind.
(Nov.)Forecast: Smart, general readers will gobble up this latest addition
to narrative nonfiction. It will surely find a place for itself among The
Professor and the Madman and An Eternal Golden Braid.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0060936649/ref=pd_sim_books_1/103-2932406-1249463?v=glance&s=books
