On October 25,1946, in a crowded room in Cambridge, England,
Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper came face-to-face for the first and only
time. The encounter lasted just ten minutes, and did not go well.
Their loud and aggressive confrontation became the stuff of
instant legend. Almost immediately, rumors spread around the world that the
two great philosophers had come to blows, armed with red-hot pokers.
Twenty years later, when Popper wrote an account of the
incident, he portrayed himself as the victor, provoking intense
disagreement. Everyone present seems to have remembered events differently.
What really happened in those ten minutes? And what does the
violence of this brief exchange tell us about these two men, modern
philosophy, and the significance of language in solving our philosophical
problems?
Wittgenstein's Pokeris an engaging mix of philosophy,
history, biography. and literary detection. David Edmonds and John Eidinow
evoke with dazzling clarity the tumult of fin-de-siècle Vienna,
Wittgenstein's and Popper's birthplace; the tragedy of the Nazi takeover of
Austria; and Cambridge University, with its eccentric set of philosophy
dons, including Bertrand Russell, who acted as umpire at the meeting. At the
center of the story stand the two philosophers themselves -- proud,
irascible, larger-than-life -- and spoiling for a fight.