Pasternak (1900-94), sister to the famous Russian writer Boris, discusses various issues within philosophy that are not usually tackled by professional philosophers. They include categories, the wavicle, a seemingly absurd though perhaps really well-founded statement, and neuro-psychological considerations. Distributed in the US by ISBS. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

About the Contributor(s): Israel Scheffler is Victor S. Thomas Professor of Education and Philosophy Emeritus at Harvard University. He taught philosophy at Harvard from 1952 to 1992 and, from 1983 to 2003, was codirector, then director of the Philosophy of Education Research Center there. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a founding member of the National Academy of Education, and a past president of both the Philosophy of Science Association and the Charles S. Peirce Society. Among his previous books are ""The Anatomy of Inquiry""( 1963), ""Four Pragmatists""(1974), ""Of Human Potential""(1985), ""In Praise of the Cognitive Emotions""(1991), and ""Worlds of Truth""(2009). His main interests lie in the philosophical interpretation of language, symbolism, science, and education.

This book gives a clear and comprehensive exposition of Niels Bohr's philosophy of physics. Bohr's ideas are of major importance, for they are the source of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics; yet they are obscure, and call for the sort of close analysis that this book provides. The book describes the historical background of the physics from which Bohr's ideas grew. The core of the book is a detailed analysis of Bohr's arguments for complementarity and of the interpretation which he put upon it. Special emphasis is placed throughout on the contrasting views of Einstein, and the great debate between Bohr and Einstein is thoroughly examined. The book traces the philosophical influences on Bohr, and unravels the realist and anti-realist strands in his thinking. Bohr's philosophy is critically assessed in the light of recent developments in the foundations of quantum physics (the work of Bell and others) and in philosophy (the realism-anti-realism debate) and it is revealed as being much more subtle and sophisticated than it is generally taken to be. While the book will be of interest to specialists, it is written in a style that will make it accessible to those who have no specialist knowledge of the relevant physics and philosophy.

Analytic philosophy--arguably one of the most important philosophical movements in the twentieth century--has gained a new historical self-consciousness, particularly about its own origins. Between 1880 and 1930, the most important work of its founding figures (Frege, Russell, Moore, Wittgenstein) not only gained attention but flourished. In this collection, fifteen previously unpublished essays explore different facets of this period, with an emphasis on the vital intellectual relationship between Frege and the early Wittgenstein.

This 2001 book is a comprehensive study of the ethics of G. E. Moore, the most important English-speaking ethicist of the twentieth century. Moore's ethical project, set out in his seminal text Principia Ethica, is to preserve common moral insight from scepticism and, in effect, persuade his readers to accept the objective character of goodness. Brian Hutchinson explores Moore's arguments in detail and in the process relates the ethical thought to Moore's anti-sceptical epistemology. Moore was, without perhaps fully realizing it, sceptical about the very enterprise of philosophy itself, and in this regard, as Brian Hutchinson reveals, was much closer in his thinking to Wittgenstein than has been previously realized. This book shows Moore's ethical work to be much richer and more sophisticated than his critics have acknowledged.