Anthony Gottlieb

This chapter questions the idea that the sciences are by their nature limited in scope and contends that it rests on a failure to press the question of what we mean by “science.” This term and its cognates are approbative or honorific rather than purely descriptive: they have typically been used to mark whatever was thought at the time to be the best sort of theoretical knowledge. So it is not clear how any topic in the domain of theoretical knowledge can be judged to be beyond the scope of scientific illumination. Particular attention is paid to the history of debates about “scientism” and to the recently popular idea that consciousness and subjectivity are citadels that cannot be breached by natural science.

_The first biography in more than three decades of the Austrian-born thinker Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century_ _“An engrossing biography [that] focuses on what is most essential and interesting in the philosopher’s work and life.... It is rare to find a book that you can open at random and almost always find something that piques your interest.”—Julian Baggini, ___Wall Street Journal__ _“Very clear and lively and interesting.”—Nigel Warburton, ___Five Books___, “Best Philosophy Books of 2025”_ According to the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951), philosophy is a “battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.” This audacious idea changed the way many of its practitioners saw their subject. In the first biography of Wittgenstein in more than three decades, Anthony Gottlieb evaluates this revolutionary idea, explaining the evolution of Wittgenstein’s thought and his place in the history of philosophy. Wittgenstein was born into an immensely rich Viennese family but yearned to live a simple life, and he gave away his inheritance. After studying with Bertrand Russell in Cambridge, he wrote his famous _Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus_ while serving in World War I. He then took several positions as a primary-school teacher in rural Austria before returning as a fellow to Cambridge, where a cultlike following developed around him. Wittgenstein worked not only as a philosopher and schoolteacher, but also as an aeronautical engineer in Manchester and as an architect in Vienna. Gottlieb’s meticulously researched book traces the itinerant and troubled life of Wittgenstein, the development of his influential ideas, and the Viennese intellectual milieu and family background that shaped him.

Philosophy is a subject with a long history and a short memory. In this landmark new study of Western thought, Anthony Gottlieb looks afresh at the writings of the great thinkers, questions many pieces of conventional wisdom and explains his findings with unbridled brilliance and clarity. From the pre-Socratic philosophers such as Empedocles, whose account of the cosmos seems "a mixture of the physics of Stephen Hawking and the romantic novels of Barbara Cartland," through the celebrated days of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, up to Renaissance visionaries like Erasmus and Bacon, "philosophy" emerges here as a phenomenon unconfined by any one discipline. Indeed, as Gottlieb explains, its most revolutionary breakthroughs in the natural and social sciences have repeatedly been co-opted by other branches of knowledge, leading to the illusion that philosophers never make any progress.

Already a classic in its first year of publication, this landmark study of Western thought takes a fresh look at the writings of the great thinkers of classic philosophy and questions many pieces of conventional wisdom. The book invites comparison with Bertrand Russell's monumental History of Western Philosophy, "but Gottlieb's book is less idiosyncratic and based on more recent scholarship" (Colin McGinn, Los Angeles Times). A New York Times Notable Book, a Los Angeles Times Best Book, and a Times Literary Supplement Best Book of 2001. (from the publisher)