Subject: PKF: Short review of Peter Munz book
Date: Sat, 30 Oct 2004 08:29:15 +1000


Peter Munz, "Beyond Wittgenstein's Poker: New Light on Popper and
Wittgenstein", Ashgate. Paperback, 220 pp.

This book is a sequel to "Wittgenstein's Poker" by David Edmonds and John
Eidinow who vividly described the background and the events at the showdown
between Wittgenstein and Popper at the meeting of the Cambridge Moral
Sciences Club  in 1946. On that occasion the two
Viennese masterminds confronted each other in a brief exchange which ended
when Wittgenstein left the room after (possibly) menacing Popper
with a poker.

Peter Munz has unparallelled qualifications for this assignment because  he
is the only person who was  a student with both Popper and
Wittgenstein, moreover he is one of the few people still alive who witnessed
the non-debate in 1946. Born in 1921, Munz arrived in New Zealand with his
family in 1940 as a German Jewish refugee. He met Popper when he started an
MA in History at Canterbury University College, Christchurch where he
attended Popper's lectures and struck up a lifelong friendship which
survived better than most of Popper's relationships with his students and
colleagues. Munz moved on to Cambridge for further postgraduate work in
history and there he pursued his interest in philosophy as a member of
Wittgenstein's seminar. He then embarked on a  40-year career as a history
professor at Victoria University in Wellington with a list of
more than a dozen books on history and several others developing and
exploring the Darwinian aspects of Popper's theory of knowledge.

Munz has radically upgraded his estimate of Wittgenstein's contribution
since 1986 when he published  "Our Knowledge of the Growth of Knowledge:
Popper or Wittgenstein?".  That book made a strong case for Popper against
Wittgenstein, and also Kuhn and Rorty, who he depicted as agents of
relativism, promoting the balkanisation of intellectual life into
self-contained, autistic specialties.  Munz now argues that Wittgenstein and
Popper should have stood together as colleagues to pool their ideas and
produce a doctine with the strengths of each. However this was precluded by
their unyielding resistance to rival schools of  thought.

The organisation of the book is complicated by Munz's larger game plan to
establish Darwinian evolutionary epistemology as the pre-eminent
development in modern thought. The second part of the book is devoted to a
critique of Evolutionary Psychlogy and this gives the appearance
of two separate books in one, unless the larger project is kept in mind as
the framework that pulls the two pieces together. According to this
framework, scientific knowledge is an evolutionary  product  of  human
activity. Knowledge itself  evolves in a dialectic fashion, propelled by
human ingenuity, checked by various forms  of criticism including
experimental and other practical tests. Contrary to classical empiricism and
rationalism, neither sensations nor intuitions have foundational status.
Rationality does not consist of avoiding error or achieving certainty but
instead means the willingness to take on board criticism with a view to
improvement. Truth is not a terminus but a regulative principle.

Behind this framework stands the giant figure of Charles Darwin and also,
more immediately, the almost forgotten shade of Karl Buhler, teacher of
both Wittgenstein and Popper, one of the really important students of
psychology and language in the twentieth century.  He promoted a
non-reductive psychology, insisting that  human behaviour cannot be reduced
to the causal chains of physics and behaviourism. Both Popper and
Wittgenstein took this on board, though in different ways.  Wittgenstein
developed his views on "forms of life" and "language games" while Popper
formulated his theories of critical rationalism and conjectural objective
knowledge.

According to Munz, both  missed a vital part of the picture. Popper refused
to be distracted from the quest for truth by the problem of meaning which in
consequence remained something of a  mystery. Wittgenstein for his part was
obsessed with meaning and did not care about the growth of knowledge or the
state of science and society. Munz suggests that his theory of meaning as a
function of rule-following behaviour in relatively closed speech communities
fills the gap in Popper's scheme. This is the lesson that Popper should have
learned from Wittgenstein, while the latter should have picked up from
Popper the importance of critical appraisal of  "forms of life" and their
conventional rules in order to move from closed or tribal societies towards
more open societies.

Munz re-wrote history in the form of an imaginary dialogue between Popper
and Wittgenstein to show how they might have worked through some of their
differences and misunderstandings to reach a happy if grudging
accommodation.  Munz concluded his revised history with a flourish:
"Everyone started laughing and the room was filled with a fine sense of
convivial agreement". If only!  That marks the end of the first part of the
book. The case that Munz has provided for a creative synthesis is
challenging and instructive, though not entirely convincing. The weakness of
Popper on meaning is asserted without a convincing explanation and it
remains to be seen whether the cohorts of the two champions will come to the
party (with a fine sense of convivial agreement!) and find illumination from
a source that they have previously regarded with disdain.

The second part of  the book takes up some of the difficulties which need to
be resolved to provide a convincing explanation for the miracle of knowledge
and its growth, without recourse to the simple certainties of positivism and
the mirror theory of  scientific knowledge. Munz writes clearly but the
argument is dense. A great deal of scholarship is on display in this book, 
fortunately
enlivened by some interesting and even-handed commentary on the
personalities and eccentricities of  the two arch rivals.

Rafe Champion 

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