Emily R. Grosholz - Böcker

Cartesian method, construed as a way of organizing domains of knowledge according to the `order of reason', was a powerful reductive tool. Descartes produced important results in mathematics, physics, and metaphysics by relating certain complex items and problems back to simpler elements that serve as starting points for his inquiries. However, his reductive method also impoverished these domains in important ways, for it tended to restrict geometry to the study of straight line segments, physics to the study of ambiguously constituted bits of matter in motion, and metaphysics to the study of the isolated, incorporeal knower. This book examines in detail the impact, negative and positive, of Descartes's method on his scientific and philosophical enterprises, exemplified by the Geometry, the Principles, the Treatise of Man, and the Meditations.

The legacy of Simone de Beauvoir has yet to be properly assessed and explored. The 50th anniversary of the publication of The Second Sex inspired this volume which brings together philosophers and literary critics, some of whom are well known for their books on Beauvoir (Bauer, Le Doeuff, Moi), others new to Beauvoir studies though long familiar with her work (Grosholz, Imbert, James, Stevenson, Wilson). One aim of this collection is to encourage greater recognition of Beauvoir's philosophical writings through systematic reflection on their place in the canon and on her methods. The Second Sex played a central role in the profound shift in philosophy's self-understanding that took place in the latter half of the twentieth century, and today offers new problems for reflection and novel means for appropriating older texts. Its reflective iconoclasm can be compared to that of Descartes' Meditations; its enormous, directly discernible impact on our social world invites comparison with Locke's Two Treatises of Government.The collection also examines the relationship between Beauvoir's literary writing and her philosophical thought. Deeply concerned with the critical and creative powers of reason as well as with the betterment of our suffering world, Simone de Beauvoir wrote in a variety of genres in addition to the philosophical essay: the novel, political journalism, and the memoir. The multiplicity of her voices was closely related to her philosophical project. Since Beauvoir's method (like that of W. E. B. du Bois) proceeded from her own immediate experience, her reflections had to find expression sometimes as narrative, sometimes as autobiography, sometimes as argument.The Legacy of Simone de Beauvoir demonstrates the many ways in which Beauvoir's writings, in particular The Second Sex, can serve as resources for thought, for the life of the mind which is as concerned with the past and future as it is with the present.

The legacy of Simone de Beauvoir has yet to be properly assessed and explored. The 50th anniversary of the publication of The Second Sex inspired this volume which brings together philosophers and literary critics, some of whom are well known for their books on Beauvoir (Bauer, Le Doeuff, Moi), others new to Beauvoir studies though long familiar with her work (Grosholz, Imbert, James, Stevenson, Wilson). One aim of this collection is to encourage greater recognition of Beauvoir's philosophical writings through systematic reflection on their place in the canon and on her methods. The Second Sex played a central role in the profound shift in philosophy's self-understanding that took place in the latter half of the twentieth century, and today offers new problems for reflection and novel means for appropriating older texts. Its reflective iconoclasm can be compared to that of Descartes' Meditations; its enormous, directly discernible impact on our social world invites comparison with Locke's Two Treatises of Government.The collection also examines the relationship between Beauvoir's literary writing and her philosophical thought. Deeply concerned with the critical and creative powers of reason as well as with the betterment of our suffering world, Simone de Beauvoir wrote in a variety of genres in addition to the philosophical essay: the novel, political journalism, and the memoir. The multiplicity of her voices was closely related to her philosophical project. Since Beauvoir's method (like that of W. E. B. du Bois) proceeded from her own immediate experience, her reflections had to find expression sometimes as narrative, sometimes as autobiography, sometimes as argument.The Legacy of Simone de Beauvoir demonstrates the many ways in which Beauvoir's writings, in particular The Second Sex, can serve as resources for thought, for the life of the mind which is as concerned with the past and future as it is with the present.

Emily Grosholz offers an original investigation of demonstration in mathematics and science, examining how it works and why it is persuasive. Focusing on geometrical demonstration, she shows the roles that representation and ambiguity play in mathematical discovery. She presents a wide range of case studies in mechanics, topology, algebra, logic, and chemistry, from ancient Greece to the present day, but focusing particularly on the seventeenth and twentieth centuries. She argues that reductive methods are effective not because they diminish but because they multiply and juxtapose modes of representation. Such problem-solving is, she argues, best understood in terms of Leibnizian 'analysis' - the search for conditions of intelligibility. Discovery and justification are then two aspects of one rational way of proceeding, which produces the mathematician's formal experience. Grosholz defends the importance of iconic, as well as symbolic and indexical, signs in mathematical representation, and argues that pragmatic, as well as syntactic and semantic, considerations are indispensable for mathematical reasoning. By taking a close look at the way results are presented on the page in mathematical (and biological, chemical, and mechanical) texts, she shows that when two or more traditions combine in the service of problem solving, notations and diagrams are sublty altered, multiplied, and juxtaposed, and surrounded by prose in natural language which explains the novel combination. Viewed this way, the texts yield striking examples of language and notation that are irreducibly ambiguous and productive because they are ambiguous. Grosholtz's arguments, which invoke Descartes, Locke, Hume, and Kant, will be of considerable interest to philosophers and historians of mathematics and science, and also have far-reaching consequences for epistemology and philosophy of language.