The topic to which this book is devoted is reductionism, and not reduction. The difference in the adoption of these two denominations is not, contrary to what might appear at first sight, just a matter of preference between a more abstract (reductionism) or a more concrete (reduction) terminology for indicating the same sUbject matter. In fact, the difference is that between a philosophical doctrine (or, perhaps, simply a philosophical tenet or claim) and a scientific procedure. Of course, this does not mean that these two fields are separated; they are only distinct, and this already means that they are also likely to be interrelated. However it is useful to consider them separately, if at least to better understand how and why they are interconnected. Just to give a first example of difference, we can remark that a philosophical doctrine is something which makes a claim and, as such, invites controversy and should, in a way, be challenged. A scientific procedure, on the other hand, is something which concretely exists, and as such must be first of all described, interpreted, understood, defined precisely and analyzed critically; this work may well lead to uncovering limitations of this procedure, or of certain ways of conceiving or defining it, but it does not lead to really challenging it.

Professor C. G. Hempel (known to a host of admirers and friends as 'Peter' Hempel) is one of the most esteemed and best loved philosophers in the If an Empiricist Saint were not somewhat of a Meinongian Impos world. sible Object, one might describe Peter Hempel as an Empiricist Saint. In deed, he is as admired for his brilliance, intellectual flexibility, and crea tivity as he is for his warmth, kindness, and integrity, and does not the presence of so many wonderful qualities in one human being assume the dimensions of an impossibility? But Peter Hempel is not only possible but actual! One of us (Hilary Putnam) remembers vividly the occasion on which he first witnessed Hempel 'in action'. It was 1950, and Quine had begun to attack the analytic/synthetic distinction (a distinction which Carnap and Reichenbach had made a cornerstone, if not the keystone, of Logical Em piricist philosophy). Hempel, who is as quick to accept any idea that seems to contain real substance and insight as he is to demolish ideas that are empty or confused, was one of the first leading philosophers outside of Quine's immediate circle to join Quine in his attack. Hempel had come to Los Angeles (where Reichenbach taught) on a visit, and a small group consisting of Reichenbach and a few of his graduate students were gath ered together in Reichenbach's home to hear Hempel defend the new posi tion.

It is widely believed by historians of linguistics that the 19th-century was largely devoted to historical and comparative studies, with the main emphasis on the discovery of soundlaws. Syntax is typically portrayed as a mere sideline of these studies, while semantics is seldom even mentioned. If it comes into view at all, it is usually assumed to have been confined to diachronic lexical semantics and the construction of some (mostly ill-conceived) typologies of semantic change. This book aims to destroy some of these prejudices and to show that in Europe semantics was an important, although controversial, area at that time. Synchronic mechanisms of semantic change were discovered and increasing attention was paid to the context of the sentence, to the speech situation and the users of the language. From being a semantics of transformations', a child of the biological-geological paradigm of historical linguistics with its close links to etymology and lexicography, the field matured into a semantics of comprehension and communication, set within a general linguistics and closely related to the emerging fields of psychology and sociology.

First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.