Proof and Explanation: The Virginia Lectures by John Wisdom - Softcover

Wisdom, John; Barker, Stephen F.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0819180424 ISBN 13: 9780819180421

Publisher: University Press of America, 1991

Synopsis

John Wisdom was Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge University through the 1950s and 1960s, holding the chair that had been Wittgenstein's. Later he taught in America, and was elected President of the American Philosophical Association, Pacific Division. This book is based on previously unpublished lectures that Wisdom delivered at the University of Virginia. Its content goes significantly beyond that of his other books. Here he is concerned with how misunderstandings about what it is to prove something or what it is to explain something can infect our thinking in many different fields. Wisdom develops an original and controversial account of what he calls 'case-by-case rocedure,' as he endeavors to dispel those misunderstandings and illuminate the nature of proof and explanation, as these occur in physics, psychology, ethics, and everyday situations. The book includes an introduction by David C. Yalden-Thomson.

About this title

Review

John Wisdom has a unique feeling for the depth of the things that people have at stake in advancing or rejecting positions in philosophy...a seductive analysis or exposition that lures the hearer or reader into a position at which the fatal weakness of all clockwork proofs and refutations becomes undeniable. The fundamental manner of arguing that was one of the impressive features of Wisdom's classes comes through unscathed.--Stephen Toulmin

About the Author

Susan Barker has a Chinese-Malay mother and an English father, and grew up in East London. She spent two years working in Japan following graduation. She has completed an MA in Creative Writing at Manchester University. Sayonara Bar is her first novel.

"From the Trade Paperback edition."

Edition details

• Publisher: University Press of America
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0819180424
• ISBN 13: 9780819180421
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 242