Books

This volume offers an unusual variety of topics presented during the fifth annual Oberlin Colloquium in Philosophy. Essays topics include: a dispute of the standard deductivist account of scientific testability; two definitions of “nonsense” that are closely related and correlate to science’s concern with truth and philosophy’s concern with concepts; contesting the causes of voluntary actions purported in Hart and Honore’s Causation and the Law; distinguishing two kinds of metaphysical tasks-taxonomic and evaluative; and discussions of “what a thing is” in terms of its qualities and particulars and the distinction between numerical and conceptual differences, universals and individuation.

Twenty four essays cover a broad range of topics in cultural anthropology, and represent the best writings of George Peter Murdock and reveal his theoretical orientation and his many landmark contributions to the field.

The ability to write well is difficult to gain. To write beyond the ordinary—beyond the clear and effective paragraph or book—needs craft, patience, and practice. And it has always required something more: genius, magic, a supreme gift. Professor Hunt in The Gift of the Unicorn binds the two—the craft and the gift—under a unifying light, showing both writer and reader the how and why and perhaps of good writing and of the writing that has gained, in Hunt’s words, “the friendship of time” and is called literature.

al-Kindi (ca. 805-870) was one of the first Arab scholars interested in a scientific rather than theological viewpoint, and played a key role in bringing Greek learning into the orbit of Islam. Nicholas Rescher assembles this annotated bibliography, listing of over three hundred items, to assist students and scholars through the maze of publications related to al-Kindi.

Cummings vividly relates the tale of the sturdy and indomitable Scotch-Irish settlers in Pennsylvania. Hardened from their ancient battles against tyranny and injustice in their native “bonnie Scotland,” they struggled to establish a new home in America along and beyond the Susquehanna River.

A thorough investigation of the factors that led to the breakup of the Old Dominion and the emergence of the new state of West Virginia during the Civil War.

The fascinating life story of Cardell Goodman, a seventeenth-century Englishman who led an outlandish, turbulent life in the company of royalty and robbers.

A biography of artist Thomas Crawford (1813-1857), a prolific neoclassical American sculptor who created many of the works that adorn the Capitol, Senate, and House of Representatives.

This book shows how, even in changing social and cultural conditions, traditional notions of religious morality are integral parts of social structure. The work specifically examines the Mapuche Indians of Chile, who have maintained an undeniable cultural consciousness over long years of contact with European Chileans.

In this pioneering study of Ambrose Bierce’s stories, Woodruff examines the best and worst of his fiction and traces the causes of Bierce’s success and failure as a writer, analyzing his inability to reconcile the extremes of temperament and belief that marked his life and give his stories their characteristic form.

Echoes of Two Cultures tells of the transmission of two cultures through legend, and how the ideals and moralities of ancient Greece and Rome have inspired and informed successive civilizations to the present day.

The first detailed study of the Regional Planning Association of America, whose organization in 1923 signified a sharp break with traditional housing and planning in the United States.

A translation of the original French manuscript biography of Joan of Arc, adding as well the first English translation of a brief chronicle of great moments in Joan’s career. This edition includes not only the fully translated manuscript of the biography and chronicle of Joan of Arc, but also expert commentary and explanation by Rankin and Quintal, who have retained the literary tone of the sixteenth-century text.

The fifteen papers in this volume deal with the two overlapping topics of knowledge and experience from the perspective of analytic philosophical inquiry. The topics addressed are prominent in the work of such modern philosophers as Ludwig Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russell, C. I. Lewis, Gilbert Ryle, A. J. Ayer, and John L. Austin.

Bruccoli reconstructs seventeen drafts and three versions of the novel to answer questions about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s major work that have long puzzled critics of modern literature.