Wittgenstein’s Poker

Wittgenstein’s Poker – David Edmonds

On the evening of October 25, 1946, two of the most celebrated philosophers of the twentieth century met for the only time, at a meeting of the Moral Sciences Club in a room at King’s College, Cambridge. Ludwig Wittgenstein was the club’s dominant figure; Karl Popper was the visiting speaker. The meeting lasted only a few minutes before it ended in confusion, with Wittgenstein apparently waving a fireplace poker during a heated argument, and the witnesses afterward disagreed sharply about what had happened.

In Wittgenstein’s Poker: The Story of a Ten-Minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers, BBC journalists David Edmonds and John Eidinow use this famous incident as the starting point for an engaging exploration of the two men, their ideas and their world.

The authors reconstruct the evening from the conflicting accounts of those present, including Bertrand Russell, and investigate what really happened. Along the way, they trace the lives of Wittgenstein and Popper, both born in Vienna into assimilated Jewish families, though from very different social backgrounds, describing the intellectual culture of Vienna, the rise of Nazism that forced many to flee, and their contrasting careers and personalities.

The book also explains the philosophical issue at the heart of the argument: whether there are genuine philosophical problems, as Popper insisted, or whether philosophical problems are merely confusions arising from the misuse of language, as Wittgenstein believed.

Lively, witty and accessible, the book combines history, biography, philosophy and detective work. Wittgenstein’s Poker is a delightful read for anyone interested in philosophy and twentieth-century intellectual history.