Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature brings to light the deep sense of crisis within the profession of academic philosophy which is similar to the paralyzing pluralism in contemporary theology and the inveterate indeterminacy of literary criticism. Richard Rorty's provocative and profound meditations impel philosophers to examine the problematic status of their discipline— only to discover that modern European philosophy has come to an end. Rorty strikes a deathblow to modern European philosophy by telling a story about the emergence, development and decline of its primary props: the correspondence theory of truth, the notion of privileged representations and the idea of a self-reflective transcendental subject. Rorty's fascinating tale—his-story —is regulated by three fundamental shifts which he delineates in detail and promotes in principle: the move toward anti-realism or conventionalism in ontology, the move toward the demythologizing of the Myth of the Given or anti-foundationalism in epistemology, and the move toward detranscendentalizing the subject or dismissing the mind as a sphere of inquiry. The chief importance of Rorty's book is that it brings together in an original and intelligible narrative the major insights of the patriarchs of postmodern American philosophy—W. V. Quine, Wilfred Sellars, and Nelson Goodman— and persuasively presents the radical consequences of their views for contemporary philosophy. Rorty credits Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Dewey for having "brought us into a period of 'revolutionary' philosophy" by undermining the prevailing Cartesian and Kantian paradigms and advancing new conceptions of philosophy. And these monumental figures surely inspire Rorty. Yet, Rorty's philosophical debts—the actual sources of his particular anti-Cartesian and antiKantian arguments—are Quine's holism, Sellars' anti-foundationalism, and Goodman's pluralism. In short, despite his adamant attack on analytical philosophy—the last stage of modern European philosophy—Rorty feels most comfortable with the analytical form of philosophical argumentation (shunned by Wittgenstein and Heidegger). From the disparate figures of Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Dewey, Rorty gets a historicist directive: to eschew the quest for certainty and the search for foundations.

Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature

Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History, Stephen Jay Gould. W. W. Norton, New York (1989), 347, Price $19.95 (U.S.A.), $27.95 (Canada)

Consequences of Pragmatism

Culture and Society, 1780-1950

There are a few things I do not understand about which I might keep asking silly questions for a life-time: first, what a no-truth theory of literature means; second, that God exists within some language games; third, that truth is the agreement of specialists on a given topic, that is of symposiasts 1 after a good dinner; fourth, I cannot understand, in the field of theory, the value of the nowadays swamping pragmatism, whose procedures can at best ratify only that which is already existent 2. There are four things I do not understand in the world, and

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Poem and Theorem: Notes on Truth and Fiction

The purpose of this article is to enquire into the notion of change in figures of speech, concepts, topics, and technical instruments-models when they are “travelling” through different milieus, contexts, systems or disciplines. I conceive of this travelling as a basic exchange of energy/information, amounting to an event which can reshape a given field of experience. My argument is based on the premise that our experience happens at multiple levels and areas, and develops along different phases, which imperceptibly flow into each other and bear at times barely decipherable traces of the events that have constituted them. The processes happening at a different level from that of present perception can only be conceived of as infractions of the world tissue and of the related universe of discourse. Therefore in any field of enquiry the process of discovery can develop only through figures of discourse. My thesis is that, at the present stage of techno-science, Scriptural Figurality, which constitutes the basis of both Western epistemology and hermeneutics, is superseded and has to be replaced by a new hypermedial rhetoric, capable to cope with complexity, infraction and emergence, both in science and the humanities.

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‘Figuring out’ in science and the humanities

the effects of science are of various different kinds. There are direct intellectual effects: the dispelling of many traditional beliefs, and the adoption of others suggested by the success of scientific method. Then there are effects of technique on industry and war. Then, chiefly as a consequence of new techniques, there are profound changes in social organization which are gradually bringing about corresponding political changes. Finally, as a result of the new control over the environment which scientific knowledge has conferred, a new philosophy is growing up, involving a changing conception of man’s place in the universe. (Russell 1951: 9-10)

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Giuseppe Martella

Papers

Poem and Theorem: Notes on Truth and Fiction

‘Figuring out’ in science and the humanities

Science, Culture, Media: Untimely Meditations