Wittgenstein’s Poker on Flickr
There’s a very engaging little book called Wittgenstein’s Poker (no, it’s not about the language game involved in “Texas Hold’em”: it’s the kind of poker you’d use on a fire) that tries to collect all available evidence from witnesses about a celebrated discussion (that apparently quickly generated into an argument and then into the possible brandishing of said poker) between philosophers Karl Popper and Ludwig Wittgenstein in Cambridge in 1946. Most of the people who were there in the room were famous or would someday become so, and most of them are now dead.
What brings this to mind is last week’s Sci Foo camp at which 200 invited “big brains,” ranging from Freeman Dyson to Paul Ginsparg to James “The Amazing” Randi (and including, oddly, Martha Stewart) came to a so-called “unconference” at the Googleplex in Mountain View to discuss the future of everything.
And the eyewitness evidence of what happened there is trickling in from people like:
evolutionary biologist Jonathan Eisen
Open Library wunderkind Aaron Swartz
Oh, and of course, it’s already up on Flickr.
No evidence yet as to whether anyone threatened anyone else with a poker during a session . . . or even played poker during the breaks.
