Routledge Classics has done us all - fans of clear thinking, clear writing and great literature - a real service by re-releasing Karl Popper's intellectual biography "An Unended Quest". In additiion to offering informative accounts of how he came about his greatest theories, he gives us entertaining life stories as well.

As we would expect from Popper, this book is set up similar to his problem solving methodology: (P1)- (TT)-(EE)-(P2). For those unfamiliar, this stands for problem 1, tentative theory, error elimination, problem 2 - and this is how Popper, at least, according to his biography, led his life. A problem would arise, he'd think about it enough to offer a best conjecture, go about watching its results (recieving criticism from others as well as himself, setting aside a refuted theory if necessary) and this would invariably lead to new and more challenging problems. It is party because of this ongoing method that Popper descrbes himself as "the happiest philosopher I ever met."

The first half of the book is especially thrilling. Popper shifts from a chapter relating personal events and development with "digression" chapters relating how these personal events led to theories, ideas and problems to be solved. Of note to me, with a B.A. in music, were the chapters exploring Poppers love for 'classical' music. Especially of suprise here was that he has many of the same tastes and reasons for them as I and he discusses many of those ideas in what could be the most exciting 'digression' in the book.

The second half of the book concentrates more on ideas and lesson events. This was the period where Popper, although still looked at as unconventional, was a bit more accepted. This period saw him write "The Open Society and It's Enemies", "Poverty of Historicism", and "Conjectures and Refutations". As most of this is about explaining his ideas, not the events therefrom, those familiar with Popper's writings may get a bit bored here. Still, with prose as crystal-clear and exciting as Popper's, nobody - from the novice to the professional philosopher - will want to miss a paragraph!

Karl Popper is yet another exceptional student of the Austrial school that produced a plethora of scientists, mathematicians, philosophers and economists at the turn of the century. The only other comparison would be the extraordinary number of scientists from tiny Scotland that almost single-handedly began the Industrial Revolution. Popper and friends were Renaissance men, masterful in numerous subjects, at ease in a laboratory, classroom or lecture hall.

They were rationalists of a specific kind. Not for them, the ramblings of a street preacher, social "activist" or leader of mass movements. Instead their actions were didactic, in the cause of something greater. Popper served as gadfly, professor, mathematician, scientist, philosopher and could be considered a spokesman for the groups. His life in Europe was remarkable for what was accomplished - oh, to have a such an inquiring, multi-faceted mind!!

This book is perhaps more approachable that some of his others. The title says it all; it is the story of the evolution of an intellect that seemed to retain its core. He was interested in so many things and so many areas that all his works are to some degrees syntheses of his interests. Whether he is admiring the logic of scientific discovery or the illogic of taxes, he is brillant, informative and endearing. The intellectual battles are here for all to see (and choose sides). He emerges with not only his mind but his soul intact.

There are two standard evaluations of Popper's importance. The first sees Popper as an important figure in the philosophy of science, one whose work is now passe, but whose influence cannot be denied. The other sees Popper as one of the great geniuses of the twentieth century, a polymath who gave us new paradigms of scientific and political thinking. This second view, while still the view of the minority, is gaining support in a new millennium where Popper is enjoying something of a renaissance. This is the view that has inspired both Bryan Magee and Antony Flew to pen histories of philosophy subtitled (surely not just for the sake of alliteration) "From Plato to Popper." And this is the view that inspires Malachi Haim Hacohen to give Popper a central place in what, despite its title, is an intellectual history of inter-war Vienna.

If Popper's importance has not been properly appreciated, suggests Hacohen, that is because we try to situate him in the Anglo-American tradition that appropriated him after the Second World War and in which he became famous. Instead, Hacohen traces the genealogy of Popper's philosophy through the currents of thought in inter-war Vienna, showing how they shaped Popper and how Popper responded to them within this context. We see how his principle of falsification evolved as a response to the logical positivism of the Vienna Circle, and how his critique of historicism and promulgation of the Open Society--though published in and appropriated by a Cold War West--were in fact inspired responses to the socio-political debates of 1930's Vienna.

Hacohen's primary aim is to give us a greater understanding, and hence a greater appreciation, of Popper's achievement. But in tracing inter-war Viennese culture more broadly, he also shows the extent to which that culture's set of concerns has shaped our own intellectual outlook thanks to the diaspora of Viennese intellectuals--many of them Jewish--in the face of the Nazi threat. The Vienna Circle influenced a generation of philosophers, Hayek has become a champion for libertarians, and Gombrich has changed the way we look at art. In all of these cases, but none more so than in philosophy, these thinkers have found success in England and America by adapting ideas born out of uniquely Viennese debates to contexts that these debates never reached.

Inevitably, our reception of these ideas on foreign shores distorted their intent. For instance, we tend to understand the Vienna Circle as Ayer understood it without appreciating how the tools and methods these philosophers developed were meant to settle the debates on the nature of science that had divided an earlier generation of Viennese thinkers, the likes of Boltzmann and Mach. Like the Vienna Circle, Popper is too often read as his English-speaking contemporaries interpreted him, and Hacohen's book gives us a rich sense of the problems and debates that shaped Popper's distinctive outlook. Hacohen has labored tirelessly in the archives, and while his preference for completeness and transparency of research over readability makes it a laborious slog, both the depth, breadth, and originality of Hacohen's scholarship is exceptional. He is more at home discussing the social sciences than the natural sciences, but he is more at home in both of these fields than most of us can ever expect to be.

The problem, then, is whether Popper is the central figure of the intellectual history of inter-war Vienna, which is how Hacohen portrays him, or if he is only one of a number of bright minds to emerge from that context, and neither the brightest nor the most influential. He was a marginal figure at that time, and his contemporaries in the Vienna Circle, though respectful, seemed not as convinced as he was that he had delivered the deathblow to logical positivism. The philosophical world more generally tends to give the role of death-dealer to Quine for his 1951 paper, "Two Dogmas of Empiricism." Hacohen might reply that we inflate Quine's importance to Popper's detriment because we come to logical positivism from an Anglo-American perspective, and that in failing to appreciate its original context, we fail to appreciate that Popper had buried logical positivism by 1934. There is some merit in this argument, and perhaps if Popper had arrived in London before 1946 and if the Logic of Scientific Discovery had been published in English before 1956, things would be different. But whether a result of historical mischance or of Popper's work not being as decisive as he thought, he has failed to have an impact on English-speaking philosophy that rivals the Vienna Circle. Or Quine, for that matter.

Hacohen makes an excellent case for the tremendous, and too-often unnoticed, influence of inter-war Vienna on post-war scholarship in the English-speaking world, but he is less convincing in situating Popper as the central figure of this influence. Popper certainly developed interesting and fertile responses to the problems of his intellectual milieu, but it seems a bit of an exaggeration to claim that he solved these problems, or even that his solutions are more compelling than those of any of his contemporaries. Hacohen does not simply state his allegiance to Popper baldly; he provides arguments, but these arguments are not likely to convince those of us who are not already Popperians.

Popper has never been fully embraced by the mainstream of Anglo-American philosophy, and this may be connected with his having been shaped by a different set of concerns than his English-speaking contemporaries. With these concerns in clearer focus, he still doesn't emerge as one of the great thinkers of the twentieth century, but Hacohen's effort to give him his due does shed valuable light on an interesting period. Though his emphasis on Popper's importance may be misplaced, Hacohen's book nonetheless makes for engaging intellectual history.

Malachi Hacohen as written a great biography that both covers the personal has well as the philosphical development of one of the 20th century's greatest minds. This is a big book in every sense of the word, big in ideas, big in scope. One of the by products of reading this book was to discover the immense impact that intellectuals from 1920's Austria and non germanic Central Europe had upon, not just philosphy, but also economic and political developments in the Anglo Saxon world. People such as Hayek, Drucker, Polyani, Tarski, Neurath, Mises and many more have had a profound effect upon the thinking of both the Right and the Left in the US and Britain. One of those books which one can honestly say the reader will be much wiser after finishing it.

The book has several different aspects, all of absorbing interest, including the detailed reconstruction of Popper's intellectual career and the depiction of the social and political milieu of Vienna between the wars.

Popper was the archetypal workaholic. Hacohen reports that he worked for 360 days of the year, all day, without the distraction of newspapers, radio or TV. Several times a month, even in old age, he worked all night and friends such as Bryan Magee would get an early morning call from Popper, bubbling with excitement to report on his latest ideas. Popper lived well out of London near High Wycombe and when Magee gained Popper's confidence he was invited to visit, taking the train to "Havercombe" (in Popper's heavily accented English). When I made the trip to Havercombe, Popper arranged to meet me at the station, carrying a copy of the BBC Listener, presumably to pick him out from all the other elderly gentlemen of middle-European extraction who might be thronging the platform at 2.00 on a Wednesday afternoon. In the event, he left the magazine at home and the kiosk had sold out so he had to buy The Times and fold it to the size of the Listener. Of course he was the only person in sight apart from the Station Master. Popper, then aged 70, had what his research assistant tactfully described as a "very positive" attitude to driving. Fortunately it was not far to his home and there were few other cars on the road. Safely home, our conversation laboured, and he frequently pushed a tray of choc-chip cookies towards me. Later he lamented to his assistant that I had eaten a whole weeks supply of his favorite cookies in one afternoon. These aspects of Popper are the other face of the man who some described as "the totalitarian liberal".

Hacohen has provided sufficient background to explain why Popper's ideas were so exciting for some people, and so threatening for others, though it was left to Bill Bartley in the 1960s to articulate the way that Popper had challenged the unstated and uncriticised assumption of "justificationism" which is the glue that holds together the ideas of the positivists and other "true belief" philosophers. Popper's lack of progress in the community of professional philosophers needs to be understood against the persisting background of justificationism, subjectivism and determinism which he has criticised in favour of critical rationalism, conjectural objective knowledge and non-determinism.

Hacohen has assembled a massive amount of material and a lesser talent in organization would have lost the plot among the details. Helped by a liberal quantity of headings sub-headings and his very clear exposition, he has kept his material under control and kept several balls in the air with superb aplomb. The several balls are Popper's diverse interests and the chaotic events that were going on around him in Vienna, not only among the intellectuals but also in Austrian politics.

These events forced Popper to flee to the other side of the world, to New Zealand, surely the antithesis of Vienna in most cultural, intellectual and political respects. There, his campaign for critical rationalism, objectivism and non-determinism was waged in political philosophy. His achievement in writing the two large volumes of "The Open Society and its Enemies" can be compared with the Battle of Britain, where young pilots held Hitler at bay in the skies over the English Channel. Popper daily patrolled the intellectual stratosphere, challenging Hitler's intellectual henchmen from Plato to modern times. This work would have been an amazing achievement under any circumstances, as it was it had to be done in the face of dreadful news from home (fourteen relatives died in the Holocaust), under the threat of Japanese invasion and against the resistance of his Professor who regarded his research and writing as theft to teaching time.

To conclude, this book is a wonderful piece of scholarship and its deserves to be read with close attention by anyone with a shred of interest in the ideas that have shaped the world today. With any luck Popper's ideas will help to shape the world tomorrow. I dissent from Hocohen's reading of Popper's ideas as a prop for social democracy, but anyone imbued with the spirit of critical rationalism can make up their own mind on that.

This book is actually worth six stars, so buy two copies, one for your local library.

During the 1950s, while "Logik der Forschung" was being translated to become "The Logic of Scientific Discovery" Popper prepared almost a thousand pages of manuscript for publication as a companion volume to be called "The Postscript to The Logic of Scientific Discover: After 20 Years". The 20 years was the time from the original publication of "Logik". It eventually became almost 50 years. For various reasons publication was delayed until William W. Bartley undertook the task of editing the large manuscript. At last The Postscript appeared in three volumes (with further additions) in 1982 and 1983. Volume 1 is "Realism and the Aim of Science", volume 2 is "The Open Universe: An Argument for Indeterminism" and volume 3 is "Quantum Theory and the Schism in Physics".

This is probably the least enjoyable of Popper's works, though it offers an important corrective to the widespread idea that Popper's ideas were superseded by Kuhn and Lakatos. In the first part, "The Critical Approach" Popper replies to Kuhn and Lakatos and shows that they never really offered significant criticisms (or alternatives) to the critical approach or to Popper's theory of conjectural objective knowledge. They did identify some problems with "falsification" and these were widely regarded as serious criticisms of Popper's ideas, even though he had recognized the problems some decades before and answered them. For example, Popper had always realised that falsification was only logically decisive (in a way that verification was not) because in real life observations are fallible and they need to be interpreted in the light of theories.

In the second part of the book Popper outlines his thoughts on the propensity interpretation of probability. This is his effort to overcome the defects of subjective theories of probability and the challenge of providing a theory of the probability of single events. This is an important but technical area of his work which some people find engrossing and others approach with a kind of mental block. I suggest that you ask David Miller to comment on Part II.

Popper has presented his controversial views of induction and the nature of scientific discovery in a number of essays and books, but no where does he advance some of his seemingly paradoxical views better than in "Realism and the Aim of Science." At first blush, Popper's views of the nature of scientific inquiry seem to defy common sense. He believes, for instance, that the distinguishing mark of scientific theories are their falsibiability, rather than verifiability; that audacity, rather than caution, is the essence of science; that irrefutability is not a virtue in a theory but a vice; and that no scientific theory ever becomes more probable when evidence is discovered in its favor but must always remain infinitely improbable. What makes this book so remarkable is the brilliant arguments Popper advances for these seemingly absurd views. Popper demonstrates why these views are necessary in order to have a rational view of science, arguing that the opposite view of knowledge, the view that regards verifiability as central to scientific inquiry, tends to blind those seeking the truth from facts which would refute their theories. Hence Popper's belief that, instead of trying to prove our theories, we should try to falsify them instead. That way, if there are facts out there which would disprove them, we are much more likely to find them.

While much work has gone on in the philosophy of science (progressive and otherwise) since Popper wrote his magnum opus, this work still stands as a survey of central issues in the philosophy of science. It analyzes concepts central to science itself (e.g. probability) and attempts to characterize science itself. That the latter analysis is incomplete is well known by now. This does not detract much from the book's well deserved reputation - but does result in this book having a 4 star review from this reviewer. It should be noted that Popper's criterion is ultimately a sort of "negative rationalism" - and from there it is not far to irrationalisms. Be warned. Works of Bunge, Kitcher and Laudan (for example) attempt to deal with this latter problem. The student or curious individual studying this work for current (rather than historical) interest is well advised to keep these later works in mind, as well as the later works of Popper himself.

This is Popper's early masterpiece, which still deserves to be thoroughly read. Thesis of the book: theories are guesses which have no secure basis and can be at any time overthrown, but which must be able to stick out their necks and face experimental tests. If they pass the tests, this does not make them any more secure or reliable than they were before.

Its first chapter explains two fundamental problems which will be grappled with in the following chapters: the problem of induction and the problem of demarcation (between science and non-science). The solution to the first problem is straightforward: there is no such thing as induction. If you want to learn more on Popper's formulation and purported solution of this problem, you should read the whole book.

The second chapter gives some methodological rules which, though presented as conventions, are set down in order to combat "conventionalism", the attempt to regard theories as irrefutable, as true by convention.

The third chapter, a bit boring, is an analysis of causality, scientific explanation, the kinds of scientific concepts and the structure of theories (these are considered interpreted axiomatic systems).

The fourth chapter deals with the notion of falsifiability, something theories must have in order to be scientific according to Popper's criterion of demarcation. Falsifiability, as here defined, is (roughly) incompatibility with at least one singular statement reporting the existence of an observable event (the distinction between occurrences and events will be found here; it was previously drawn by Bertrand Russell, I may add).

The fifth chapter deals with these last kind of statements (basic statements): their form, their content and their role in science. These statements are in no sense justified by experience, says Popper, even if their acceptance is caused by experience; they are as risky as theories, although in scientific practice there is not (usually) much trouble in agreeing to accept or to reject them. It is a pity that Popper says that basic statements are accepted by a "free choice" or convention, because it is only after observing that the popperian Forscher will agree to accept a basic statement.

The sixth chapter tries to define comparative criteria of falsifiability. Given that all scientific theories have an infinity of observable consequences, how are we to compare their boldness = refutability = their sticking out their necks?

I am running out of words. The seventh chapter deals with the notion of simplicity. Popper's thesis here is: simplicity = boldness = falsifiability; a simple thesis, and a bold one.

The eighth chapter contains a deft and clear discussion of some methodological and mathematical problems of probability. I highly recommend it. It is after reading a chapter like these that you can realize how cheap and misleading the criticisms of Stove are to which some previous reviewers refered.

Chapter 9 contains a plea for objectivism in quantum physics, although it is rather out-dated. But the attack on Heisenberg's programme is still instructive.

The last chapter deals with "corroboration" of theories and includes an important critique of justificationist probabilism. One should read it together with Reichenbach's highly negative Erkenntnis review: "Über Induktion und Wahrscheinlichkeit: Bemerkungen zu K.Popper's Logik der Forschung".

The appendices are also worth reading, even if they tackle mainly with technical problems.

I think that no one has seen with greater clarity the problems and ambiguities of Popper's methodology as displayed in this book than his coleague-rival Imre Lakatos. Even if he is not half as gifted as Popper, and makes many mistakes as regards induction, his critique of popperian demarcation and rules of science is certainly worth reading.

On this book, one can also benefit and enjoy reading Neurath's indignant review of the 1934 edition: "Pseudo-Rationalismus der Falsifikation", and Grelling's review in "Theoria", 1937 (1).

This is the book where Popper first introduced his famous "solution" to the problem of induction. Originally publish in German in 1934, this version is Popper's own English translation undertaken in the 1950s. It should go without saying that the book is a classic in philosophic epistemology--perhaps the most important such work to appear since Hume's "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding." Popper argues that scientific theories can never be proven, merely tested and corroborated. Scientific inquiry is distinguished from all other types of investigation by its testability, or, as Popper put, by the falsifiability of its theories. Unfalsifiable theories are unscientific precisely because they cannot be tested.

Popper has always been known for his straightforward, lucid writing style. There are no books on epistemology that are as easy to read and understand than Popper's. Nonetheless, of all Popper's books, "Logic of Scientific Discovery" is easily the most difficult. I don't know whether it is because it was his first book or because it was originally written in German or because of all the technical problems in probability and quantum theory that are dealt within its pages. Whatever the reason, this book, despite its tremendous importance, cannot be recommended to those seeking an introduction to Popper's thinking (and Popper, whether you agree with his conclusions or not, is well worth getting to know). For those who merely want a rough overview of Popper's opinions, perhaps the best book is "Popper Selections," edited by David Miller. For those eager for more depth, I would recommend "Realism and the Aim of Science." Popper no where makes a better case for his epistemological views than in this eminently readable book. Further elaborations of Popper's views can be read in "Conjectures and Refutations" and "Objective Knowledge."

Popper has been severely attacked by philosophers who are offended by his bold fallibilism and anti-dogmatism. No philosopher attacked Popper more strenuously than David Stove. Stove's criticisms are interesting, but they are not as conclusive as one disparaging critic has suggested. Stove makes three main arguments against Popper: (1) Popper theories are bad because they lead to the epistemological relativism of Kuhn, Lakatos, and Feyerabend; (2) Popper's dismissal of induction is contrary to common sense and is therefore "irrational"; and (3) Popper's argument on behalf of "conjectural knowledge" is fallacious because the phrase "conjectural knowledge" is a contradiction in terms. All three of these arguments are logically fallacious. The first commits the fallacy of "argument ad consequentiam," which tries to refute the truth of a doctrine by associating it to its (alleged) consequences. This is, in a way, a sort of guilt by association argument. The second argument simply assumes the very point at issue. No where in his book on Popper does Stove attempt to prove that induction is rational. He simply assumes it is and denounces Popper on the basis of this gratuitous assumption. The last argument is merely verbal and proves only that Popper has violated common linguistic usage. But why should we assume that linguistic usage must always be philosophically right? Stove also makes a great fuss about Popper's assertion that a "falsifiability" is preferable to "irrefutability." Stove assumes that this is palpably absurd. How can a theory that is falsifiable possibly be better than one that is irrefutable? But Stove appears to have missed the whole point of Popper's theory. Falsifiability merely means "testability." Irrefutable, on the other hand, means simply "untestable." When looked at in this line, Popper's theory no longer seems so absurd. In fact, it is merely a great leap forward in the fight against dogmatism and close-mindedness.

The burden of being a philosopher that says something both new and counter-intuitive is that throughout one's career, you end up repeating yourself, re-clarifying your arguments to the endless number of critcs that misunderstand you. In Popper's case, the views advanced were that all knowldedge must be held as tentative and that real intellectual progress comes not from verifying true theories (which can never be 'for sure) but in falsifying and eliminating old ones (which you only need to do once). The critics misinterpreted and Popper did repeat himself time and time again.

This is one of the very few bad things about the book. Honestly, if you've read Popper before (Conjectures and Refutations, Objective Knowledge, Logic of Scientific Discovery) this book will have little, if any, to add. If you've not, this is a great introduction.

There are 3 sections: On Knowledge, On History and a section for miscellaneous essays. The first section touches on Popper's views on how we recieve, criticize, falsify and act on knowledge. The second is an expansion of the first. Here, Popper focuses on historical events hee deems important: Immanuel Kant's phiosophical formulation, the invention of the book. He also gets a tad bit into politics, where a liberal democracy is preferred.

It is the third section, though, that is the payoff. Essays ranging in diversity from "How I See Philosophy" to "What Does The West Believe In". The best essay in the book, "Toleration and Intellectual Responsibility", is a critical rationalist's look at the role of intellectuals (Popper carefully avoids snobbery here) role in perpetuating a tolerant, non-violent society. As crucial now in '03 as when he gave the lecture in '82.

To conclude, if you are new to Popper, this is a good intro (but Conjectures and Refutations or Popper Selections might still be better. If you've read those or much other Popper before, you will probably find yourself able to guess what Popper says in each essay without much problem. You can safely skip this one.

This book was my first exposure to Popper's philosophy, which I have since found to be consistently convincing, enlightening, and inspiring. In the face of fashionable twentieth-century irrationalism and associated political fanaticisms, Popper stresses the importance of intellectual modesty, rational discourse, non-violence, tolerance, and an open society. In this series of collected essays Popper makes a lucid and compelling case for a philosophy that accepts that all of our knowledge is conjectural and uncertain, but that this, far from leading to irrationality, makes science and reason the best tools we have for confronting the universe that surrounds us. In contrast with the impenetrable, self-important nonsense of many modern philosophers, Popper writes with a refreshing simplificity and modesty. A truly beautiful and extraordinary book.

The book is not bad, but... afterall, what interacts? The brain and the body? The Body/Brain and the Enviroment (the outside world)? Mind (the working of the brain) and Culture (our environment, build by us) interact? What's new about that?

Popper tries to build a language to clarify and facilitate discussion and change of ideas, but he writes in such a way that many people are missleaded. I know people who see in Popper a foundations for their mistical views of the Universe ( afriend of mine even argues with me that evolution is not the answer to the many features we humans have: seek the mind, he says.So, is three-worlds philosophy has led some people to seek the mind OUTSIDE the brain (they don't perceive that one of the strugles of science is the reduction of EMERGENT properties to POTENCIALS - be they phisical or chemical potentials). What really interacts are phisical sistems (the various subsistems of the brain, these subsistems and the outside world). His evolutionary epistemology has lots is common with modern sociobiology, but sociobiology is better.

Another problem with Popper's epistemology is that he reduces epistemological concepts to ontological things. His epistemology should be viewd as heuristic, not the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

By the way, if you read Popper's book and enjoy'd it, read Hofstadter's GEB (Godel, Escher, Bach). You wont regret.

Popper creates an original (and useful) theoretical framework to interpret the interaction of mind and body- the world3 model. Although parts seem uninformed by advances in neurology and cognitive science, the framework itself is useful in explaining the relationship between the physical world (world1), the cognitive world (world2), and the products of the mind that exist as a result of human invention (world3). As always, Popper provides a series of compelling arguments that at the very least establish a threshold of reason that must be crossed for the serious student of epistemology.

In contrast to theories of entrepreneurs which portray them as heroic figures, omniscient clairvoyants, or lucky fools, Harper argues that, like all humans, entrepreneurs can learn from their experience. They make reasonable conjectures, observe what happens, and then revise the theories and assumptions that led to the conjecture. Some are very good at this, but many -- probably most -- are not. Consequently, any theory of entrepreneurship must address the pervasive phenomenon of entrepreneurial failure and losses. The book is based on Harper's dissertation. Unlike most such books which are prematurely published, before their authors' ideas had time to mature, this book reflects the enormous amount of work Harper put into reviewing the relevant literature in economics (his field), psychology, philosophy, and other fields. Harper's intellectual mentor is Karl Popper, and he does an excellent job in summarizing Popper's ideas and applying them to the entrepreneurial problem: learning in the face of vast uncertainty. This is NOT a book for practicing enterpreneurs, but rather for people interested in theories of entrepreneurship. Harper's perspective represents a welcome challenge to the "instrumentalist" and "entrepreneurial alertness" views that now enjoy wide currency. It is a major contribution to the emerging evolutionary view of entreprenership.

I have had a life long interest in philosophy although I didn't major in it in college. After finishing this book I was left with an unsatisfied feeling. I really hadn't learned much about the philosophy of Wittgenstein or Popper. Nor had I been given a clear account or accounts of what happened during the Poker Incident. I did like the details on Popper and Wittgenstein's lives leading up to the Poker Incident as well as the information on some of the other philospers who were there during the incident.

1) Wittgenstein is considered to be the greatest philosopher of the 20th century by many/most philosophers. After reading Wittgenstein's Poker I couldn't tell you why!!
2) I think the book makes Popper out to be more of an important philospher than he really is. Although I could be wrong!?
3) The biographical details on Wittgenstein and Popper are intestesting. Although I didn't think the purpose of the book was to be biographical.

The bottom line is that the book didn't put enough meat behind the differing philosophies of Wittgenstein and Popper which would have gone a long way toward making their encounter meaning full for the reader. In short, a thumbs down.

I say "surprisingly interesting" because having only a limited exposure to the study of philosophy (that introductory undergraduate class was a long time ago!) I was unfamiliar with the event at the heart of this book: the single meeting between Karl Popper and Ludwig Wittgenstein, at which Cambridge faculty member Wittgenstein may have brandished a hot poker at guest speaker Popper. The authors begin with a recounting of what is known about their 1946 meeting, and it is not immediately obvious to the uninitiated why a 10-minute argument regarding whether there are philosophical "problems" or merely "puzzles" warrants an entire book. The authors then detail the competing accounts of the meeting before turning to biographies of the main players, placing their dispute in context of world events and their individual personalities. We meet the aristocratic, charismatic Wittgenstein, driven in his perfectionism; we see Popper striving to overcome economic hardship and to gain acceptance to the inner circle of academia; we see both in Austrian society which turned from nurturing to potentially deadly (descended from Jews, both fled Austrian anti-Semitism during World War II). Along the way we learn only a bit about their core philosophical differences, which may be just as well; a more thorough treatment would probably be incomprehensible to the average reader yet still inadequate to the reader with a strong background in philosophy. I'm pretty sure I got the gist of what the authors presented, and it's the nature of the men in question, not their ideas, that makes this book so compelling. By the time I was ¾ of the way through, I found myself turning the pages as fast as I could, eager to get back to the confrontation even though I knew what was coming - and that the specific nature of the event would remain an enigma.

Wittgenstein's Poker is a well-balanced overview of an ambiguous 10-mintue confrontation between two of the most prominent thinkers of the 20th Century. The book is part history, part biography, and part philosophic analysis of the two thinkers works and theories. It does not side with Wittgenstein, as the title might imply, but rather, until the latter chapters in tone only, presents the background and genesis for the conflict between Wittgenstein's claim that all philosophical problems are mere puzzles due to problems with language. His declaration is once language is cleared of all its ambiguities, all problems would dissolve. Popper's refutation is that by merely "cleaning up" language might, at best, help ratify some faulty premises but it would not solve all philosophic dilemmas. Most would approach this text due to an interest for Wittgenstein but it also succeeds in presenting Popper and his thought in a fair light while serving as an introduction to an (as the final chapter states) otherwise secondary figure in philosophy.

I've not read any others in the "great philosophers" series but I have read a few of the "x in 90 minutes" and " on x" series (very similar in that they run about 70 pages each and are meant to serve as brief layperson's overviews). From what I know of this type of book, this one is quite badley done.

As a long time fan of Popper, I sympathize with how Mr. Raphael must have felt in attempting this project. Karl Raimond Popper was a thinker whose ideas lead him from and to many topics. From ontological speculation (realism) to epistemology (critical rationalism) to the progress of science (conjecture and refutation) to ethics (a very bizarre and unfortunately not so discript pragmatic liberal humanism) to politics (democracy with again, not so discript piecemeal engineering). If you read his autobiography "An Unended Quest", he even has a philosophy of music!

For all that, Mr. Raphael could have done 10 times better than he did. Out of all the ideas above, Mr. Raphael talks about only conjecture and refutation (in 10 intro pages that compares in attitude to a kid being forced to eat her brussel sprouts).

The next 49 pages are spent discussing Popper's views on the impossibility of historical prophecy. Not that these views arent important but in light of Popper's humongous contribution to the philosophies of science and epistemology (and the non-contriversial nature, at least in todays world, of Popper's anti-historicism) focusing, by in large, the whole book on it is putting pages to bad use.

What caused me, though, to give the book 2 stars (I may have given it 4 otherwise) is that the book is marketed as an introduction to the ideas of Popper for those who've either never heard of him or never read of him. Had this book been marketed as an intro specifically to his anti-historicism, it would have been much easier to swallow. As it is, the reader taking this as an apropos introduction will be infinitely misled.

Fortunately there are better introductions. Bryan Magee's "Philosophy in the Real World: An introduction to Karl Popper" is, with maybe 40 more pages than this volume, a much better, more accurate, and proportional volume written by someone who knew Popper as a teacher and friend. For the student who has more time, Geoffrey Stokes "Popper: Philosophy, Politics and the Scientific Method" is a book that examines, first, Popper's political philosophy and works backwards to reveal how his philosophy of science gets him there. The best introduction, however, is going to be Popper's own "In Search of a Better World".

Another short book from The Great Philosophers Series. Although Popper is most famous for his philosophy of science, this book dwells mostly upon his political theory. I suppose that is okay, but this approach somewhat misrepresents why Popper is an important philosopher for us today. After all, he is generally regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of science of this century. I get the feeling Raphael was not comfortable with science writing, which makes me wonder why the editors put him on this project. Don't get me wrong, the writing was accessible and informative on Popper's political theory, but it just seemed a bit misplaced, given what I take this series of books is concerned with.

This small book deals only with the political and not the scientific part of Popper's work, thus mainly with 'The open society and its enemies' and 'The poverty of historicism'.
It is an excellent introduction for this part of Popper's work.
The author clearly explains that improvement or self-correction through freedom of speech (criticism) is only possible in democracies and not in dictatorial (fascist) or pseudo-scientific (marxist) systems of government.
For me, he correctly recognizes the possible limits of Popper's proposition of 'piecemeal engineering' of political, social or environmental problems: "Is piecemeal engineering grand enough to deal with global pollution, genocidal oppression of minorities and pandemics such as AIDS?"
He also sees clearly the actual dangers for democracies: "How are major corporations, with transnational funds and managements, to be controlled by democratic authorities whose writs run only to their frontiers?"
Also some interesting facts (rare) about Popper's personal life.
A very worth-while read.