Wittgenstein’s Poker

A work of popular history built around a single evening: the meeting of the Moral Sciences Club in Cambridge on 25 October 1946, at which Karl Popper read a paper called "Are There Philosophical Problems?" with Ludwig Wittgenstein in the chair and Bertrand Russell present. At some point Wittgenstein took up the fireplace poker, gestured with it and left the room, and witnesses have disagreed ever since about what happened and whether Popper's later account of his witty retort is true. The authors, both BBC journalists, use the incident to tell three stories. They sift the conflicting testimony of those present; they compare the lives of the two men, both Viennese of Jewish descent, one born into one of the wealthiest families in Austria and the other into the professional middle class; and they explain the disagreement behind the clash. Wittgenstein held that philosophy dissolves puzzles caused by misunderstandings of language, while Popper insisted that there are real problems that need solving.

It turns a famous quarrel into a clear, gripping introduction to two of the twentieth century's most influential philosophers and to the question of what philosophy is for.