Wittgenstein's Poker: The Story of a Ten-Minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers (Hardcover)

~ (Author), John Eidinow (Author) "ON THE EVENING OF FRIDAY, 25 October 1946 the Cambridge Moral Science Club-a weekly discussion group for the university's philosophers and philosophy students-held one of..." (more)
Key Phrases: visiting lecturers with pokers, poker incident, philosophical puzzle, Vienna Circle, New Zealand, First World War (more...)

Editorial Reviews

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.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Here is ivory-tower drama at its crackling best. On Cambridge University's campus in 1946, two of the twentieth century's most notable philosophers, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper, squared off in an intense 10-minute exchange rumored to have led to Wittgenstein brandishing a red-hot poker. What actually happened in this now-legendary clash, and how it reflects the development of philosophy and the times, is what Edmonds and Eidinow set out to discover. Wittgenstein came to the encounter with a reputation as a "charismatic genius." Popper, by contrast, presented a mundane picture, his academic life falling in the shadow of Wittgenstein, whose views on philosophy he fiercely derided. Both men were of Jewish extraction, displaced from Austria by the Nazi takeover. But Wittgenstein's wealth had allowed him freedoms denied the more middle class Popper. Feelings from all these myriad gulfs spilled over into the Cambridge encounter. The authors' profiling of the audience, which included Bertrand Russell, further illuminates what stoked the philosophical fires that day. Moving quickly from one brief chapter to another, Edmonds and Eidinow bring rich interpretation to the extraordinary incident, a BBC documentary on which is in the making. Philip Herbst
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Ecco; 1st edition (October 23, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0066212448
• ISBN-13: 978-0066212449
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 5.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (101 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #454,460 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good but unsatisfying, January 14, 2002

By	"murphytune" (Minneapolis) - See all my reviews

This was a fun read and I devoured it in about three days. It provided fascinating biographical and historical details and it was decent overview of the philosophical issues of the time. Yet I came away feeling a little short-changed. The book didn't offer a very clear view of Wittgenstein's philosophy, how he used it and how he applied it. The same perhaps could be said of the book's characterization of Popper but I knew much more about Popper coming in. Finally, the book never really provides a blow-by-blow account of the argument -- Popper said this, Wittgenstein responded with that, Popper replied thusly, and so on. It seems like that at least a speculative paraphrasing of the argument would have been possible given the research the authors did. I was disappointed they didn't even try. All I came away with was a general idea of what the argument was about -- philosophical problems versus puzzles -- and the atmosphere of the scene at Cambridge. I wanted more.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Can Stories Of Fencing Philosophers Be Falsified?, February 17, 2002

By	Bruce Crocker "agnostictrickster" (Whittier, California United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Wittgenstein's Poker by Dave Edmonds & John Eidinow, a distant cousin to The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand, is a good book, but not a great book. The book is a parallel biography of two of the most important philosophers of the 20th Century, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper. The book starts with the one meeting between the two philosophers, which ended with Wittgenstein wielding a fire poker at Popper. I was originally going to give the book a full 5 stars, but I feel the ending let me down. I was expecting the authors to tie all the disparate threads followed in the book together better than they did, but was disappointed when the book just whimpered to an end, especially after such a clever beginning. I would still recommend the book to folks interested in philosophy, Wittgenstein, Popper, and the history of the first half of the 20th Century. If I could, I'd give the book a 4.4 stars. ...

33 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining but superficial, February 5, 2002

By	Dennis M. Clark (Oakland, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The authors present an entertaining overview of some of the more interesting people in 20th century philosophy, especially highlighting the way Bertrand Russell, Karl Popper, and Ludwig Wittgenstein interacted. The background on Vienna is especially nice. However, this book is journalism, not philosophy, even though the publisher's blurb claims that it is an engaging mix of "philosophy, history, biography, and literary detection". None of the major philosophical problems, positions, or puzzles are presented in any depth; usually the authors hop to the next topic just as the material is getting challenging, rather than trying to engage the reader in something intellectually satisfying. They even present us with an example of the technical logical notation of Bertrand Russell (again, just as it's starting to get good) but then offer no explanation of the elements of the example, leaving the reader wondering why they bothered to show it, as if expecting a "Gee, whiz" reaction but no interest in knowing more.

There are also some curious passages where the authors make some remarkable assertions with no substantiation for them. For example, on page 239, they state that "Capitalism has not led to a greater concentration of wealth into fewer and fewer hands." They are very vague about whether they are contesting that capitalism has caused this situation (defensible) or whether they think that this has not actually happened (incredible). To make it worse, it's hard to tell whether Popper is making the assertion or the authors. Such vagueness is hardly philosophy.

Page 291 has some writing which is more typical of a television documentary than a serious book. Evaluating Popper, the authors state that "Many of the political ideas which in 1946 seemed so radical and were so important have become received wisdom. The attacks on authoritarianism, dogma, and historical inevitability, the stress on tolerance, transparency, and debate, the embracing of trial-and-error, the distrust of certainty and the espousal of humility -- these today are beyond challenge and so beyond debate." Oh, really? "If a resurgence of communism, fascism, aggressive nationalism, or religious fundamentalism once again threatened the international order..." If? What can they possibly mean by "If"? While one could argue that communism is hardly resurgent, I can only wonder which planet of which star system contains an international order free of the other stresses listed here. The authors idealistically describe a utopian vision that is hard to reconcile with today's world, seeming to conclude that Popper was after all a tremendous influence on world peace. I don't think so.

An amusing read, but you'll need to turn elsewhere for philosophical writing.