i dont think anyone got that impression, but i will clarify anyway that i do not particularly agree with agassi's worshipping defense of popper.
Justin Schwartz wrote:
>
>> The seminar progressed as follows: Popper began his lecture, an
>> explicit critique of Wittgenstein - and was immediately interrupted.
>> At some
>> point, Wittgenstein seized the fireplace poker and began flourishing
>> it. The
>> elderly Russell, then 74,
>
> Russell was 74, but I should be so elderly at 74; he was younger at 74
> than most people are at 24.
>
indeed! in fact his exciting career of anti-nuclear protests and arrest in the US, and probably a few more marriages?, were yet to come.
>
>> made an uncharacteristic effort to
>> intervene,
>> asking Wittgenstein to calm down.
>
> Oh, he was always doing that with W, who was tempermental.
>
i remember reading something by russell where he mentions that W would storm into his room at night and start threatening to commit suicide, and russell having to calm him down and host him for a good part of the night in order to prevent the drastic threat!
>>
>> how, after the Anschluss [the union of Austria with
>> Germany in 1938], Wittgenstein negotiated with the leaders of Nazi
>> Germany,
>> trying to buy his sisters Arian pedigrees for an enormous sum of money.
>
> Is this true? I thought he gave away his money after WWI, trued to live
> as a village schoolteacher before Russell badgered him into coming back
> to Cambs.
>
does seem strange. W was released from prison in italy in 1918 (or 1919?) and had already donated his family inheritance away by 1920. as you mention above, i think russell had to pay for W to take the train to cambridge. its possible that W did the negotiation part but with his sister's money (not his own) after he quite his teaching in mid 1920s.
> Popper continued teaching at the London School of
>> Economics, made a name for himself, and was eventually knighted. He is
>> now known as the 20th century's greatest philosopher of science.
>
> According to whom? Popperians, I suppose. He's important, but I had to
> persuade my phil of sci teacher at Michigan to include some Popper in
> his course. If I had to name The 20th C Greatest Philosopher of Science,
> I'd have to say Kuhn.
>
kuhn was certainly the most popular. the greatest? if you say so. i am too much of a PKF groupie to accept it. its funny that in the review agassi (or the writer of the review) brings up the point that agassi only describes the situation (w.r.t popularity of W or heidegger) and not the reason. but the reviewer or agassi do not then go on to say why this happened other. why did heidegger or W gain popularity? because they are "cool"?
>
>> Russell, as though he were already dead, not a very
>> pleasant feeling.
>
> Well, honestly, philosophically he was. Had to know it, too.
>
>> They fought for the inheritance of Bertrand Russell."
>
> Nonsense. W thought Russell a fool. Couse he thought everyone a fool.
>
if i remember right, in the preface or introduction to one of his "common man"'s philosophy texts (the philosophy of logical atomism?), russell says words to the effect that W had in a sense become his philosophical teacher and attributed some of his misgivings to W's criticisms.
--ravi
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- man is said to be a rational animal. i do not know why he has not been defined as an affective or feeling animal. more often i have seen a cat reason than laugh or weep. perhaps it weeps or laughs inwardly - but then perhaps, also inwardly, the crab resolves equations of the 2nd degree. -- alasdair macintyre.