Post by Matt Johnson

“Well, God has arrived, I met him on the 5:15 train.” John Maynard Keynes wrote this in a letter to a friend on January 18, 1929. He had just met a philosopher named Ludwig Wittgenstein. If you’ve not heard of Wittgenstein, I’d encourage you to read his story in a new book called Time of the Magicians. Born into immense wealth, he joined the Austrian army and fought on the Eastern Front in World War I, where he was eventually captured by the Italians. As a POW, he wrote a book called Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. After the war, he gave away his entire fortune (the equivalent of hundreds of millions of pounds today) so that he could focus only on his writing and work. Wittgenstein then took his book to Cambridge to present it as his PhD dissertation. Bertrand Russel was on his thesis committee, and after presenting the work, Wittgenstein clapped his hands, walked up to the committee, and said, “Don’t worry, I know you’ll never understand it.” Wittgenstein got his PhD and his book redefined modern philosophy. I have no clean takeaway or lesson from this story, I just think it’s fascinating to see that the most transformative thinkers and doers always seem to walk the most winding roads through life.