Comment by stabbles
6 years ago
This reminds me of a story about the philosopher Wittgenstein missing the train and deciding to buy a train for himself instead.
Googling the story does not turn up many results. Does anyone know if this is in fact true?
Googling "Wittgenstein missing train" returned me page 44 of "Ludwig Wittgenstein" by Edward Kanterian from "Critical Lives" series, which attributes this story to David Pinsent's diaries, but talks about "hiring entire train" instead of buying it:
https://books.google.ru/books?id=yfeJH-1KcD8C&pg=PA44&lpg=PA...
Bing returned this HN thread and a link to the relevant part of Wikipedia article where this is also stated and "Portraits of Wittgenstein, Extracts from the Diary of David Pinsent 1912–1914" are referenced:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein#Sexual_ori...
Meh:
In an earlier episode Wittgenstein and Eccles, his friend from Machester, were planning to catch a train from Manchester to Liverpool. However, having missed the train, Wittgenstein suggested hiring an entire train to bring them to their destination. The plan was eventually dropped, but he still opted for a costly solution, namely hiring a taxi.