Monday, August 30, 2010

Were Wittgenstein's antics catching?

A friend sent me this link which features a picture of the philosopher Karl Popper clutching his head. The description of the head-clutching (plus) Wittgenstein in my post of last month ('The showmanship of Ludwig Wittgenstein') was taken from the book Wittgenstein's poker which is about the notorious debate between LW and Karl Popper at which LW was supposed to have threatened Popper with a poker. Ah, those were the days...

2 comments:

  1. Well, it seems I should read Popper. It sounds as though he considered all theories provisional, a position that seems reasonable to me. Just a few years ago, astronomers discovered so-called Dark Matter, which was wholly unsuspected beforehand and turns out to be a far larger proportion of the matter in the universe than the matter we are made of.

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  2. Yes Popper is certainly worth reading. He tends to a Cartesian dualist position, which puts me off a bit, but this aspect of his thinking may appeal more to you!

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