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9780571227358: Wittgenstein's Poker
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On 25 October 1946, in a crowded room in Cambridge, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper came face to face for the first and only time. The encounter lasted only ten minutes, and did not go well. Almost immediately, rumours started to spread around the world that the two philosophers had come to blows, armed with red-hot pokers. But what really happened?

Wittgenstein's Poker engagingly winds together philosophy, history and biography into a compelling piece of detective work. It ranges from the place of assimilated Jews in fin-de-siècle Vienna, to what happens to memory under stress, to a vivid portrait of Cambridge and its eccentric set of philosophy dons, including Bertrand Russell (who acted as umpire during the altercation). At the centre of the story stand the philosophers themselves, proud, irascible, larger than life, and spoiling for a fight.

'Those ten minutes shook the world of Western philosophy literally to its foundations . . . Edmonds and Eidinow have a very good story to tell, and they tell it wonderfully well.' Irish Times

'A meaty, exceedingly well-researched and engaging book. In its dramatic readability Wittgenstein's Poker brings to mind Simon Winchester's The Professor and the Madman; in the depth and breadth of its scholarship it evokes Carl Schorske's Fin-de-siècle Vienna . . . a marvel of passionate journalism.' San Francisco Chronicle

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About the Author:
David Edmonds is a senior research associate at Oxford's Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics and a multi-award winning radio producer for the BBC World Service. He co-founded the popular philosophy podcast Philosophy Bites with Nigel Warburton and has published several titles associated with that podcast, along with his works co-authored with John Eidinow. John Eidinow was a presenter/interviewer for BBC Radio 4 and World Service radio, working in news and current affairs and making documentaries on historical and contemporary issues. He has published three books with his co-author David Edmonds, and one - Another Day, alone. Their co-authored books are the best-selling Wittgenstein's Poker (2001), which was short-listed for the Guardian First Book Award and translated into over thirty languages, Bobby Fischer Goes to War (2004), which was longlisted for the Samuel Johnson prize. Their most recent work is Rousseau's Dog (2006).
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.

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  • PublisherFaber & Faber
  • Publication date2005
  • ISBN 10 057122735X
  • ISBN 13 9780571227358
  • BindingPaperback
  • Number of pages304
  • Rating

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