[lit-ideas] Re: Ludwig and Bertie

Interesting play, Ritchie; and I enjoyed Geary's rewrite.
I especially enjoyed the Borgesian anachronism: the play is supposed to take 
place (or 'take time' as Geary would correct me) in 1911; yet the incident, as 
per Edmonds & Eidinow's book -- of 2004 -- ocurred (took time) in 1946. 

Cheers,

JL

------

In a message dated 4/29/2004 10:11:57 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx writes re: Justin Greene's play,
Dahlia finding  herself once again short of funds for her magazine,
"Milady's Untenaable Propositions," asks Bertie to break into Ludwig
Wittgenstein's bedroom in dead of night and steal his priceless, gold-plated
poker, a souvenir of the famous encounter with Professor Popper.
Wittgenstein's Poker : The Story of a Ten-Minute Argument Between Two Great 
Philosophers
by David Edmonds (Author), John Eidinow (Author) 

In October 1946, philosopher Karl Popper arrived at Cambridge to lecture at a 
seminar hosted by his legendary colleague Ludwig Wittgenstein. It did not go 
well: the men began arguing, and eventually, Wittgenstein began waving a fire 
poker toward Popper. It lasted scarcely 10 minutes, yet the debate has turned 
into perhaps modern philosophy's most contentious encounter, largely because 
none of the eyewitnesses could agree on what happened. Did Wittgenstein 
physically threaten Popper with the poker? Did Popper lie about it afterward? 
BBC 
journalists Edmonds and Eidinow use the controversy as a springboard to probe 
the 
whys and whats of these two great thinkers, weaving biography, journalism and 
philosophy to produce one of the year's most entertaining and intellectually 
rich books. The authors show that the debate was a clash at several levels. 
First, of personalities: each was "bullying, aggressive, intolerant and 
self-absorbed"; in other words, accustomed to winning and unlikely to back 
down. 
Second, of class: Wittgenstein was an Austrian aristocrat, Popper was 
bourgeoisie 
(each fled Vienna to escape Hitler). And third, of ideas: Wittgenstein believed 
that philosophy boiled down to nothing more than a series of linguistic 
puzzles, while Popper thought philosophy involved real problems that 
immediately 
affected the world at large. Clearly, the stakes were high for both men in that 
lecture hall especially because their common mentor, the aging icon Bertrand 
Russell, was also in attendance. The debate thus took on the character of a 
succession for the throne. Tightly constructed and extraordinarily well 
written, 
this is a marvelous blend of lay and academic scholarship. It has every chance 
of becoming a classic of its kind. (Nov.)Forecast: Smart, general readers 
will gobble up this latest addition to narrative nonfiction. It will surely 
find 
a place for itself among The Professor and the Madman and An Eternal Golden 
Braid.


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