Thomas Kuhn's shadow hangs over almost every field of intellectual inquiry. His book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions has become a modern classic. His influence on philosophy, social science, historiography, feminism, theology, and (of course) the natural sciences themselves is unparalleled. His epoch-making concepts of 'new paradigm' and 'scientific revolution' make him probably the most influential scholar of the twentieth century. Sharrock and Read take the reader through Kuhn's work in a careful and accessible way, emphasizing Kuhn's detailed studies of (...) the history of science, which often assist the understanding of his more abstract philosophical work. These historical studies provide vital insight into what Kuhn was actually trying to achieve in his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: an endeavour far less extreme than either his 'foes' or his 'fans' claim. In the book's second half, Sharrock and Read provide excellent explications, defences and, where appropriate, criticisms of Kuhn's central concept of 'incommensurability', and tackle head on the crucial issue of whether Kuhn's insights concerning the natural sciences can be extrapolated to other disciplines, such as the social sciences. This is the first comprehensive introduction to the work of Kuhn and it will be of particular interest to students and scholars in philosophy, theory of science, management science and anthropology. (shrink)

In his autobiography, Mr Leonard Woolf very forcibly protests Lord Keynes's familiar account of the kind of influence G. E. Moore had exerted over those who were later to become members of the Bloomsbury Group. You will remember that Keynes, writing in 1938 about his early beliefs as an undergraduate at Cambridge, maintained of himself and his companions: ‘We accepted Moore's religion … and discarded his morals … meaning by “religion” one's attitude towards oneself and the ultimate and by “morals” (...) one's attitude towards the outside world and the intermediate. (shrink)

Between Ennius and Vergil the Latin epic hexameter underwent dramatic changes in both prosody and diction.1 The precise history of these changes remains obscure, although it is clear from Catullan spondiazontes and Lucretian archaisms, from variation in the use of enjambment and the history of Hermann's bridge, that the versatile and expressive instrument the hexameter was to become in Vergil's hands was not the result of linear development. In fact, despite the pivotal role often assigned to Cicero, 2 in many (...) ways the last one hundred years of the Republic is better characterized as a period of poetic variety and innovation than one of linear progress toward classical perfection. The fragments of Furius Antias can shed light on this period of change. They show remarkable prosodic characteristics and verbal finesse, and they appear to have influenced both Vergil and Ovid. (shrink)