Exact thinking in demented times

What Hacker News says

1. baruchelMar 2026
   If I remember correctly, this picture is commented in the very good book "Exact thinking in demented times", together with Mach's ideas.
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2. baruchelDec 2025
   Exact thinking in demented times by Karl Sigmund
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3. fghJan 2022
   Forgot to mention another book: Karl Sigmund, Exact Thinking in Demented Times: The Vienna Circle and the Epic Quest for the Foundations of Science.

   A really beautiful book with lots of photographies of all members of the Vienna circle and what happened to them. Some parts, of course, are also about Gödel.

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4. baruchelNov 2019
   May I add my two cents? I really enjoyed reading "Exact thinking in demented times" by Karl Sigmund. One of my favorite non-fiction books.
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5. jhbadgerNov 2019
   There's also a good recent book by Karl Sigmund called "Exact Thinking in Demented Times" which is about the Logical Positivists in Vienna during this period (and the later interwar period) which included Wittgenstein.
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6. kieckerjanJun 2018
   It never stops to amaze me how many of the creative and destructive forces of the 20th century originated in Vienna. The writer of this piece concentrates on literature, but one could as easily concentrate on music, art, politics, philosophy, math or natural science. What’s more, there were common themes running through the developments in all these fields, which makes studying this place and time a uniquely rich intellectual experience.

   Of particular interest to the HN crowd may be a recent book by Karl Sigmund, Exact Thinking In Demented Times, which documents the rise and decline of the Viennese Circle, a group of physicists, mathematicians and philosophers who changed the course of maths and science. Mach, Boltzmann, Einstein, Russell, Gödel, Wittgenstein, Neurath, Carnap, Von Neumann, Schlick, etc. etc. The interconnections will dazzle you and the place that holds the whole web together is Vienna.

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