Name: Wittgenstein's Poker
ISBN: 9780571320325

Wittgenstein's Poker

On October 25, 1946, in Cambridge, England, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper came face-to-face for the first and only time. The encounter lasted just ten minutes, and did not go well. Their loud and aggressive confrontation became the stuff of instant legend. Almost immediately, rumors spread around the world that the two great philosophers had come to blows, armed with red-hot pokers. Twenty years later, when Popper wrote an account of the incident, he portrayed himself as the victor, provoking intense disagreement. Everyone present seems to have remembered events differently. What really happened in those ten minutes? And what does the violence of this brief exchange tell us about these two men, modern philosophy, and the significance of language in solving our philosophical problems? Wittgenstein's poker is an engaging mix of philosophy, history, biography, and literary detection.

What Hacker News says

wannabebaristaSep 2025

There are lots of great books on the Vienna Circle. Check out Dave Edmonds' Wittgenstein's Poker (2001) for a fun and accessible intro.

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wannabebaristaAug 2024

Here are books I recommend to everyone and got me interested in economics and philosophy:

- The Worldly Philosophers by Robert Heilbroner

- The Cost of Rights: Why Liberty Depends on Taxes by Stephen Holmes and Cass Sunstein

- Wittgenstein's Poker by David Edmonds and John Eidinow

- A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell

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patjaDec 2020

If you want something more than the Wikipedia content, try the book Wittgenstein's Poker. My book club read it about a decade ago and it's one of the few titles we keep referring back to.

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bikenagaAug 2018

The first chapter "Conjectural Knowledge" of his book "Objective Knowledge" is a discussion of his proposed solution to the problem of induction.

His theories of science (and in particular, of falsification) are explained in his book "Conjectures and Refutations". I read it years ago when I was in grad school.

Popper's writing is clear and jargon-free, so anyone who is interested in his ideas should take a look at some of the original sources.

Finally, "Wittgenstein's Poker" by David Edmonds and John Eidinow takes an argument between Wittgenstein and Popper as a starting point for exploring their lives and work.

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philwelchJul 2010

For those curious about the life and times of Ludwig Wittgenstein, the formative years of analytic philosophy, and an intriguing incident which took place at Cambridge in 1946, I would highly recommend the book Wittgenstein's Poker by David Edmonds and John Eidinow. It begins:

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 its regular meetings....That evening the guest speaker was Dr. Karl Popper, down from London to deliver an innocuous-sounding paper, "Are There Philosophical Problems?" Among his audience was the chairman of the club, Professor Ludwig Wittgenstein, considered by many to be the most brilliant philosopher of his time. Also present was Bertrand Russell, who for decades had been a household name as a philosopher and radical campaigner.

...

This was the only time these three great philosophers--Russell, Wittgenstein, and Popper--were together. Yet, to this day, no one can agree precisely about what took place. What is clear is that there were vehement exchanges between Popper and Wittgenstein over the fundamental nature of philosophy--whether there were indeed philosophical problems (Popper) or merely puzzles (Wittgenstein). These exchanges instantly became the stuff of legend. An early version of events had Popper and Wittgenstein battling for supremacy with red-hot pokers. As Popper himself later recollected, "In a surprisingly short time I received a letter from New Zealand asking if it was true that Wittgenstein and I had come to blows, both armed with pokers."

From there it discusses the lives of Popper and Wittgenstein, from their early years in Vienna to their time in England and the ideas of those places and times, up to and including the famous clash between the two in Cambridge.

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