Wittgenstein's Poker: The Story of a Ten-Minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers - Edmonds, Eidinow. Comment.

 Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper are arguably the most well-known 20th century philosophers outside the walls of academia. Their views on philosophy, however, could not be more disparate. When Wittgenstein published the Tractatus, a mere 70-page philosophical treatise, which The Times London called a "logical poem", it put the subject of philosophy on its head. Wittgenstein rejected metaphysical propositions, claiming that to be meaningful, propositions have to mirror possible state of affairs. It is in the Tractatus that he revealed his picture theory of language, in which "language in its structure represents the world." (P.132) There are no problems in philosophy, Wittgenstein claimed, only puzzles to be deciphered.

Karl Popper believed Wittgenstein to be terribly mistaken. He claimed that there are serious problems in philosophy to be solved, and laid down his philosophy of science, presenting his verification and falsification theory in his magnum opus, The Logic of Scientific Discovery. The backgrounds of these two men are strikingly similar, raised in pre-WWI Vienna though from opposite social stations, and only to cross paths much later in life at the famous meeting of the Moral Science Club at Cambridge, in which a ten-minute exchange occurred between the two irascible and profound thinkers, that went down in academic history.

This is philosophic journalism at its most readable form, combining history, biography, philosophy, careful speculation and first-hand witness accounts. The authors describe Viennese culture and its intellectual and artistic movements just prior to the fall of the Austrian Hungarian empire that, in effect, truly defined modernism. Vienna during this time produced Wittgenstein, Freud, Popper, Robert Musil, Victor Adler, Gustav Klimt and Mahler. This was fin-de-siecle Vienna that some would suggest changed the way we view the world and ourselves. Although a short book, Edmonds and Eidinow have captured the atmosphere and the personalities that contributed to the profound thoughts and ideas that shaped Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper.

This is philosophy as drama, philosophy as comedy, and ultimately an entertaining ride through the history of ideas, using as its starting point, a simple ten-minute confrontation between two men, that has managed to remain in the minds of many influential individuals and great thinkers in their own right throughout the twentieth century.

Even if you have no interest in logical positivism, analytical philosophy or philosophy as a whole, but are interested in the history of ideas, this well written and amusing book would be well worth a look at.