REVIEW: The Leader's Bookshelf (2020)

By Thomas Scarborough

BOOK REVIEW: The Leader’s Bookshelf: 25 Great Books and Their Readers

Martin Cohen. Rowman & Littlefield, $32 (288p) ISBN 978-1-53813-576-1

The Philosopher by Marlina Vera 2018

It was Martin Cohen's sideways look at philosophy which propelled him into the limelight with Routledge's 101 Philosophy Problems (1999). In his latest book, the author would seem to recall his offbeat roots—like a band returning to its original sound.

There is an obsession in business and management circles today with leadership theory (I myself hold two Master's degrees in leadership!) and the books which propound it. There are hundreds of them, if not thousands, many of them fresh off the press. Mostly, they adhere to the ‘transformational’ model—which typically advises vision, character, and influence, and a few things besides. Such books are generally written by people who claim to have tried the formula and succeeded (many have not).

Yet, rather than read books by leaders, why not read the books the leaders read? What were their own sources of inspiration? It would seem to make eminent sense. What's more, for the doubters, Martin Cohen meticulously traces how exactly the leaders' reading is connected with their leadership: thought leaders, political leaders, corporate leaders, and leaders of many kinds. While this is not an entirely new idea,* it is still fresh, and reveals approaches to leadership which are in some way the same—only different—to those of the ‘transformational’ leadership genre.

Martin Cohen selects twenty-five ‘great books’ (by Plato, George Orwell, Herman Melville, Alex Haley, and so on) and twenty-one people who read them (Harry Kroto, Jacob Riis, Rachel Carson, Malcom X and so on), mixing them all into ten chapters.  With a potpourri like this, one is hardly going to find a systematic leadership theory. A review in Publisher’s Weekly calls the book a ‘fun yet haphazard survey’. Yet there is ‘method in the madness’. One finds it in the chapter titles. The ten chapters of the book represent an orderly progression of concepts. It seems worth listing the chapter titles here:

Meet the Wild Things (which is to say, tame the wild things of life)

Roll the Dice (which is to say, just give it a go, and see)

Save the Planet—One Page at a Time! (give a care for the wider world)

Search for Life’s Purpose

See the World in the Wider Social Context

Be Ready to Reinvent Yourself

Set Your Thinking Free

Make a Huge Profit—and Then Share It

Recognise the Power of Symbols

Follow Your Personal Legend

In each of these chapters, Martin Cohen describes the books, and describes the people who read them, then ties the two together—and like the best of biographers and historians, drops a sprinkle-sugar of fascinating facts and anecdotes into his text: for instance, John D. Rockefeller’s (miserly) penny in the Sunday School plate, a lost and lonely young Barack Obama’s attachment to a children’s book, or Richard Branson’s zany experiments with chance.

Is there any leadership theory we can glean from the book? In spite of its free-wheeling style, there surely is. All these leaders found a guiding thought which resonated with them, and they stuck to it; they often had a vision for a wider world, and its many subtleties and interconnections; they found, too, the ‘vision, character, and influence’ of the leadership books—yet so very differently. Theirs was vision which was not bound to material outcomes, character which did not always match cultural norms, and influence which seemed an after-effect rather than a carefully nurtured goal in itself.

In an important sense, one needs to note that this book is not a standard work of research—and yet it is thoughtful, balanced, and broad. It represents personal insight and wisdom, from a well informed philosopher. This is what Cohen brings to the book. In fact, the more serious leadership theory often is little more than unsupported conjecture, where the conjectural nature of it is well disguised.

There is something of an Easter egg for philosophers at the very end of the book—tucked away in the afterword. Cohen says that time and again, in the reading of successful people, ‘philosophers and philosophical works pop up as aspirational or influential texts more often than any others’. At the end of the day, it is philosophers who rule the world—by proxy as it were. And yet, what do the philosophers themselves read? In the case of Ludwig Wittgenstein anyway (one of the thought leaders described in this book) it turns out that it was a work of literary imagination, indeed humour: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, by Laurence Sterne (1759). This is one of the many surprising literary connections made by Cohen's book.

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* A popular book of its kind, also The Leader's Bookshelf (without subtitle), surveys the reading of high-ranking military officers of the US Navy. Published by the Naval Institute Press (2017).

Is Popper a ‘modest’ Leo?

Posted by Martin Cohen

A few years ago, astrologer-aesthete Mark Shulgasser asked this revealing question about one of the 20th century's most under-rated philosophers for us. Popper, we should first recall, is admired for at least two big ideas: the first that science proceeds by testing hypotheses and disregarding those that fail the test (‘falsification’) and secondly, his critique of ‘historicism’ (the idea that history is marching towards a fine goal) and linked defence of liberal values and what he calls ‘the open society’. His point is that too many philosophers, from Plato down, think that they are exceptional beings - ‘philosopher kings’.

And yet... Shulgasser throws the charge back at him!

Those (like Popper) born under the astrological sign of Leo think they are kings. Do Leo philosophers think like that too?

Shulgasser continues:

‘Popper himself, so Napoleonic, the overcompensating short man. Popper's philosophical ambitions are overweening. He conquers continents. No one talks about Popper the person without noting his autocratic behavior and intransigence in contrast to his ethic of openness. Here's the Leo dilemma — the autocratic, central I versus the right of every peripheral being to claim to be the same.’

Certainly, in later years, it seems that Professor Popper lived in a house ‘supremely large in area, and adorned with numerous books, works of art, and a Steinway concert grand piano’...  But does that make him ‘Napoleonic’? Consider Brian Magee (broadcaster, politician, author, and popularizer of philosophy) on Popper. taken from Confessions of a Philosopher. Magee starts by accepting Popper as the ‘the outstanding philosopher of the twentieth century’ indeed, the “foremost philosopher of the age”! 

‘My chief impression of him at our early meetings was of an intellectual aggressiveness such as I had never encountered before [Napoleonism]. Everything we argued about he pursued relentlessly, beyond the limits of acceptable aggression in conversation. As Ernst Gombrich—his closest friend, who loved him—once put it to me, he seemed unable to accept the continued existence of different points of view, but went on and on and on about them with a kind of unforgivingness until the dissenter, so to speak, put his signature to a confession that he was wrong and Popper was right. 

In practice this meant he was trying to subjugate people. And there was something angry about the energy and intensity with which he made the attempt. This unremittingly fierce, tight focus, like a flame, put me in mind of a blowtorch, and that image remained the dominant one I had of him for many years, until he mellowed with age. . . 

He behaved as if the proper thing to do was to think one’s way carefully to a solution by the light of rational criteria and then, having come as responsibly and critically as one can to a liberal-minded view of what is right, impose it by an unremitting exercise of will, and never let up until one gets one’s way. ‘The totalitarian liberal’ was one of his nicknames at the London School of Economics, and it was a perceptive one.’

Popper it seems,  ‘turned every discussion into the verbal equivalent of a fight, and appeared to become almost uncontrollable with rage, and would tremble with anger ’.

Yet central to his philosophy is the claim that criticism does more than anything else to bring about growth and improvement of our knowledge and his political writings contain the best statement ever made of the case for freedom and tolerance in human affairs.

So who is the ‘real’ Karl Popper? Does it matter if he failed to live up to his own writings? There's a revealing story told about Popper in which he was invited to give a talk at Cambridge University ‘at the Moral Sciences Club’. 

Who did wave the poker during the acrimonious debate? I understood the Popper version of the Poker incident to put him in a meek and philosophical light and Wittgenstein in a boorish, intolerant one. Maybe I got this wrong - alas I committed myself to this in print - in my book called Philosophical Tales. 

Anyway, what is known is that Popper was there to present his paper entitled ‘Are There Philosophical Problems?’ at a meeting chaired by Wittgenstein. The two started arguing vehemently over whether there existed substantial problems in philosophy, or merely linguistic puzzles—the position taken by Wittgenstein. In Popper’s account, Wittgenstein gestured at him with a fireplace poker to emphasise his points. When challenged by Wittgenstein to state an example of a moral rule, Popper claims to have replied: ‘Not to threaten visiting lecturers with pokers’, after which (according to Popper) Wittgenstein threw down the poker and stormed out.

My guess it that Popper was indeed a little bit Napoleonic. Mind you, he faced a world in which he was passed over by others all the time, not least Wittgenstein, partly on some kind of unspoken notion of his not being ‘one of us’, not being quite posh enough. Popper was denied access to Oxbridge, and had to graze on the outskirts of academia as a 'not-quite-great' philosopher. 

And elsewhere Magee himself makes it clear he believes Popper is colossally underrated. Why, it’s enough to give anyone a Napoleon complex!

Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?

For scientists, space is not empty but full of quantum energy

Posted by Keith Tidman

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz introduced this inquiry more than three hundred years ago, saying, ‘The first question that should rightly be asked is, “Why is there something rather than nothing?”’ Since then, many philosophers and scientists have likewise pondered this question. Perhaps the most famous restatement of it came in 1929 when the German philosopher, Martin Heidegger, placed it at the heart of his book What Is Metaphysics?: ‘Why are there beings at all, and why not rather nothing?’

Of course, many people around the world turn to a god as a sufficient reason (explanation) for the universe’s existence. Aristotle believed, as did his forerunner Heraclitus, that the world was mutable — everything undergoing perpetual change — which he characterised as movement. He argued that there was a sequence of predecessor causes that led back deep into the past, until reaching an unmoved mover, or Prime Mover (God). An eternal, immaterial, unchanging god exists necessarily, Aristotle believed, itself independent of cause and change.

In the 13th century Saint Thomas Aquinas, a Christian friar, advanced this so-called cosmological view of universal beginnings, likewise perceiving God as the First Cause. Leibniz, in fact, was only proposing something similar, with his Contingency Argument, in the 17th century:

‘The sufficient reason [for the existence of the universe] which needs not further reason must be outside of this series of contingent things and is found in a substance which . . . is a necessary being bearing the reason for its existence within itself. . . .  This final reason for things is called God’ — Leibniz, The Principles of Nature and Grace

However, evoking God as the prime mover or first cause or noncontingent being — arbitrarily, on a priori rather than empirical grounds — does not inescapably make it so. Far from it. The common counterargument maintains that a god correspondingly raises the question that, if a god exists — has a presence — what was its cause? Assuming, that is, that any thing — ‘nothing’ being the sole exception — must have a cause. So we are still left with the question, famously posed by the theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, ‘What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?’ To posit the existence of a god does not, as such, get around the ‘hard problem’: why there is a universe at all, not just why our universe is the way it is.

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Some go so far as to say that nothingness is unstable, hence again impossible.

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Science has not fared much better in this challenge. The British mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell ended up merely declaring in 1948, ‘I should say that the universe is just there, and that’s all’. A ‘brute fact’, as some have called it. Many scientists have embraced similar sentiments: concluding that ‘something’ was inevitable, and that ‘nothingness’ would be impossible. Some go so far as to say that nothingness is unstable, hence again impossible. But these are difficult positions to support unquestionally, given that, as with many scientific and philosophical predecessors and contemporaries, they do not adequately explain why and how. This was, for example, the outlook of Baruch Spinoza, the 17th-century Dutch philosopher who maintained that the universe (with its innumerable initial conditions and subsequent properties) had to exist. Leaping forward to the 20th century, Albert Einstein, himself an admirer of Spinoza’s philosophy, seemed to concur.

Quantum mechanics poses an interesting illustration of the science debate, informing us that empty space is not really empty — not in any absolute sense, anyway. Even what we might consider the most perfect vacuum is actually filled by churning virtual particles — quantum fluctuations — that almost instantaneously flit in and out of existence. Some theoretical physicists have suggested that this so-called ‘quantum vacuum’ is as close to nothingness as we might get. But quantum fluctuations do not equate to nothingness; they are not some modern-day-science equivalent of the non-contingent Prime Mover discussed above. Rather, no matter however flitting and insubstantial, virtual quantum particles are still ‘something’.

It is therefore reasonable to inquire into the necessary origins of these quantum fluctuations — an inquiry that requires us to return to an Aristotelian-like chain of causes upon causes, traceable back in time. The notion of a supposed quantum vacuum still doesn’t get us to what might have garnered something from nothing. Hence, the hypothesis that there has always been something — that the quantum vacuum was the universe’s nursery — peels away as an unsupportable claim. Meanwhile, other scientific hypotheses, such as string theory, bid to take the place of Prime Mover. At the heart of the theory is the hypothesis that the fundamental particles of physics are not really ‘points’ as such but rather differently vibrating energy ‘strings’ existing in many more than the familiar dimensions of space-time. Yet these strings, too, do not get us over the hump of something in place of nothing; strings are still ‘something’, whose origins (causes) would beg to be explained.

In addressing these questions, we are not talking about something emerging from nothing, as nothingness by definition would preclude the initial conditions required for the emergence of a universe. Also, ‘nothingness’ is not the mere absence (or opposite) of something; rather, it is possible to regard ‘nothingness’ as theoretically having been just as possible as ‘something’. In light of such modern-day challenges in both science and philosophy, Lugdwig Wittgenstein was at least partially right in saying, early in the 20th century (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, section 6.4 on what he calls ‘the mystical’), that the real mystery was, ‘Not how the world is . . . but that it is’.

Wittgenstein's Fork

Posted by Thomas Scarborough

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein was convinced, from an early date, that philosophical problems would be solved by paying close attention to the workings of language. In this quest, he reached a great fork in the road. We may never know whether he recognised it as a fork – however the direction which he took profoundly influenced generations of philosophers.

Words, ran the dominant theory of Wittgenstein's day, were the 'basic units' or 'atomic elements' of language – much like the little pieces of coloured glass we use to create a mosaic. While the finished mosaic may represent anything we please – ships on the sea, for instance, or flowers on a table – the little pieces of glass are the most basic constituent parts which do not change. Similarly, says the Oxford Dictionary of Lingusitics, words are 'the union of an invariant form with an invariant meaning'. This view remains dominant today.


On this view, it is natural to arrange these basic units or atomic elements in some kind of semantic structure. Such semantic structures have been variously described – yet the basic idea remains the same: whether we speak of tables of binary features, hierarchies of semantic categories, networks of predicators, or taxonomies of concepts – and so on – we imagine the existence of some such structure. By and large, too, these structures work – although not completely. Here follow two examples of semantic chains – which are snippets of semantic structure sometimes called predicator chains:

     Cheshire cat → cat → animal → living thing
     Mountain bike → bicycle → vehicle → non-living thing

Notice that each term in each chain properly belongs only to a limited range of meanings. For instance, one cannot point to a Cheshire cat and say, 'This is a vehicle,' although one might well point to a Cheshire cat and say (rather too obviously), 'This is an animal.' Notice, too, that even at the end of such chains, we may not arrive at anything common. There are terms in these chains which in no way resemble one another, or refer to one another. To put this another way, a Cheshire cat and a mountain bike will rarely turn up in the same conversation.

In fact most of our words do not sit well together. More than that, they repulse one another. Whether we speak about chemistry, ecclesiology, sociology, or anything else under the sun, our words will either fit into the subject at hand – or not. The philosophers Wilhelm Kamlah and Paul Lorenzen noted that words (they spoke of predicators) 'always stand in such a tightly woven nexus that any one tends to appear with others'. For instance, while we are permitted to say, 'The maid carries the pail,' we cannot say, 'The maid carries the moon,' or anything of that sort.

To put this another way, we seem to find no universal structure, where all of our words will fit. Instead, we find structures (plural). In fact, through semantic structures our language is tightly constrained – so tightly constrained that when we put pen to paper, in whichever direction we cast our thoughts, we tend to be able only to construct semantic networks which are agreeable to our starting point. This was hardly a revolutionary insight at the level of linguistics – until Wittgenstein applied it to metaphysics.

Wittgenstein (the later Wittgenstein, that is) recognised that our language is pervaded by structures (plural), and further that no single semantic structure will accommodate words which go by the description of 'the union of an invariant form with an invariant meaning'. Concept words, he noted, may be used differently within different language-games, and all they have in common then is 'family resemblances'. There are therefore, he said, various 'language-games' within the same language, and these may be said to be incommensurate.

Here is Wittgenstein's fork. Wittgenstein could, at this point, have come to one of two conclusions:

• Each semantic structure represents a self-contained world, to be understood only within its own structure – with its own 'form of life' (its context). And as one moves from structure to structure, so the basic units and atomic elements which are words, though they are still recognisable in a way (the family resemblances), become something else. This is the fork, of course, which Wittgenstein took. 

• Alternatively, given his assumptions, Wittgenstein could have concluded that each word in our language may accommodate free-wheeling worlds of associations within – chamaeleons of sorts – so that a single word may combine variously with other words, yet remain the same inside. This would enable us to keep our words within one world, and transcend a plurality of semantic structures. 

To put it in a picture, Wittgenstein stood before the choice, either of studying 'family resemblances', or of studying the DNA. He chose family resemblances – which he based in turn on the prevalent notion of words as basic units and atomic elements. While Wittgenstein saw that these basic units and atomic elements were not immutable (in contrast to the dominant view of his day), he could not quite shake off the notion of little pieces of coloured glass, even though these pieces could not be used universally.

Wittgenstein's view had vast, obstructive repercussions. Above all, it seemed to close the door to the possibility of a new metaphysic – namely, of finding a new, comprehensive explanation of reality. Without a shared language, there can be no common metaphysic, let alone an all-encompassing one. A generation later, Jean-François Lyotard echoed Wittgenstein's sentiments, describing our situation as 'incredulity toward metanarratives' – which, he noted, is rooted above all in 'the crisis of metaphysical philosophy'.

Further Reading:

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Part I)
Sebastian Löbner, Understanding Semantics (Part II)
Wilhelm Kamlah and Paul Lorenzen, Logical Propaedeutic (Chapter III)
Thomas Scarborough, Revisiting Aristotle's Noun

Wittgenstein's Fork

Posted by Thomas Scarborough

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein was convinced, from an early date, that philosophical problems would be solved by paying close attention to the workings of language. In this quest, he reached a great fork in the road. We may never know whether he recognised it as a fork – however the direction which he took profoundly influenced generations of philosophers.

Words, ran the dominant theory of Wittgenstein's day, were the 'basic units' or 'atomic elements' of language – much like the little pieces of coloured glass we use to create a mosaic. While the finished mosaic may represent anything we please – ships on the sea, for instance, or flowers on a table – the little pieces of glass are the most basic constituent parts which do not change. Similarly, says the Oxford Dictionary of Lingusitics, words are 'the union of an invariant form with an invariant meaning'. This view remains dominant today.

On this view, it is natural to arrange these basic units or atomic elements in some kind of semantic structure. Such semantic structures have been variously described – yet the basic idea remains the same: whether we speak of tables of binary features, hierarchies of semantic categories, networks of predicators, or taxonomies of concepts – and so on – we imagine the existence of some such structure. By and large, too, these structures work – although not completely. Here follow two examples of semantic chains – which are snippets of semantic structure sometimes called predicator chains:

     Cheshire cat → cat → animal → living thing
     Mountain bike → bicycle → vehicle → non-living thing

Notice that each term in each chain properly belongs only to a limited range of meanings. For instance, one cannot point to a Cheshire cat and say, 'This is a vehicle,' although one might well point to a Cheshire cat and say (rather too obviously), 'This is an animal.' Notice, too, that even at the end of such chains, we may not arrive at anything common. There are terms in these chains which in no way resemble one another, or refer to one another. To put this another way, a Cheshire cat and a mountain bike will rarely turn up in the same conversation.

In fact most of our words do not sit well together. More than that, they repulse one another. Whether we speak about chemistry, ecclesiology, sociology, or anything else under the sun, our words will either fit into the subject at hand – or not. The philosophers Wilhelm Kamlah and Paul Lorenzen noted that words (they spoke of predicators) 'always stand in such a tightly woven nexus that any one tends to appear with others'. For instance, while we are permitted to say, 'The maid carries the pail,' we cannot say, 'The maid carries the moon,' or anything of that sort.

To put this another way, we seem to find no universal structure, where all of our words will fit. Instead, we find structures (plural). In fact, through semantic structures our language is tightly constrained – so tightly constrained that when we put pen to paper, in whichever direction we cast our thoughts, we tend to be able only to construct semantic networks which are agreeable to our starting point. This was hardly a revolutionary insight at the level of linguistics – until Wittgenstein applied it to metaphysics.

Wittgenstein (the later Wittgenstein, that is) recognised that our language is pervaded by structures (plural), and further that no single semantic structure will accommodate words which go by the description of 'the union of an invariant form with an invariant meaning'. Concept words, he noted, may be used differently within different language-games, and all they have in common then is 'family resemblances'. There are therefore, he said, various 'language-games' within the same language, and these may be said to be incommensurate.

Here is Wittgenstein's fork. Wittgenstein could, at this point, have come to one of two conclusions:

• Each semantic structure represents a self-contained world, to be understood only within its own structure – with its own 'form of life' (its context). And as one moves from structure to structure, so the basic units and atomic elements which are words, though they are still recognisable in a way (the family resemblances), become something else. This is the fork, of course, which Wittgenstein took. 

• Alternatively, given his assumptions, Wittgenstein could have concluded that each word in our language may accommodate free-wheeling worlds of associations within – chamaeleons of sorts – so that a single word may combine variously with other words, yet remain the same inside. This would enable us to keep our words within one world, and transcend a plurality of semantic structures. 

To put it in a picture, Wittgenstein stood before the choice, either of studying 'family resemblances', or of studying the DNA. He chose family resemblances – which he based in turn on the prevalent notion of words as basic units and atomic elements. While Wittgenstein saw that these basic units and atomic elements were not immutable (in contrast to the dominant view of his day), he could not quite shake off the notion of little pieces of coloured glass, even though these pieces could not be used universally.

Wittgenstein's view had vast, obstructive repercussions. Above all, it seemed to close the door to the possibility of a new metaphysic – namely, of finding a new, comprehensive explanation of reality. Without a shared language, there can be no common metaphysic, let alone an all-encompassing one. A generation later, Jean-François Lyotard echoed Wittgenstein's sentiments, describing our situation as 'incredulity toward metanarratives' – which, he noted, is rooted above all in 'the crisis of metaphysical philosophy'.

Further Reading:

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Part I)
Sebastian Löbner, Understanding Semantics (Part II)
Wilhelm Kamlah and Paul Lorenzen, Logical Propaedeutic (Chapter III)
Thomas Scarborough, Revisiting Aristotle's Noun