Cambridge University Moral Sciences Club (original) (raw)

Second meeting Oct 26th, 1946 :::Dr K.R. Popper, Methods in Philosophy :::In Mr. Braithwaite's Rooms at King's In the first part of his paper Dr Popper explained how he chose this topic as a consequence of his astonishment and surprise at the Secretary's letter of invitation*, which made use of such expressions as "a short paper," "open a discussion," "state a philosophical puzzle" etc, which reflected a different view from his own as to what philosophy is. He went on to describe this philosophy and its origins, giving it the label "Linguistic Philosophy" . He considers the advent of this school an epoch in philosophy, but he would criticize it very strongly on several points. Thus while it occupies itself with "preliminaries" it claims exclusiveness to the title of "philosophy" and never goes beyond these "preliminaries" to the more important problems of philosophy. After all, one knows what he means by his philosophical question and the important thing is to provide the "true answer" for it. It also cultivates "esotericism." In discussion, however, it turned out that to give an example of the "beyond the preliminaries" problem is a difficult task which calls for both labour and time. The examples which Dr Popper eventually suggested seemed to some of the audience to be no more than problems in pure maths or Sociology. The meeting was charged to an unusual degree with a spirit of controversy. Prof. Wittgenstein was in the chair. *It is the Club's form of invitation. Wasfi Hijab, Secretary (en)

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