A journey through philosophy in 101 anecdotes
By: Nicholas Rescher
Published: 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 289
ISBN-13: 9780822963356
Subjects: Philosophers; Philosophy; Anecdotes; History
Other titles: Journey through philosophy in one hundred and one anecdotes; Journey through philosophy in one hundred one anecdotes
Description: "The first comprehensive chronology of philosophical anecdotes, from antiquity to the current era. Rescher introduces the major thinkers, texts, and historical periods of Western philosophy, recounting many of the stories philosophers have used over time to engage with issues of philosophical concern: questions of meaning, truth, knowledge, value, action, and ethics. Rescher's anecdotes touch on a wide range of themes--from logic to epistemology, ethics to metaphysics"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Antiquity to 500 AD. The Tower of Babel ; Aesop's donkey ; Xenophanes's animal theologians ; Pythagoras's numbers ; Heraclitus's river ; Anaximander's earth ; Zeno's races ; The atomists' nature ; The atomists' worlds ; Socrates's disappointment ; Eubulides's riddle and Epimendes's lie ; Plato's Republic ; Plato's ring of Gyges ; Plato's demiurge ; Plato's knowledge ; Aristotle's sea battle ; Aristotle's precept on precision ; Aristotle's golden mean ; Pilate's truth ; Archimedes's lever ; The ship of Theseus ; Tertullian's absurdity ; St. Augustine's time; title: The Middle Ages, 500-1500. Avicenna's plank ; Buridan's ass ; Omar Khayyám's finger ; King Alfonso's boast ; Scholasticism's omnipotence perplex ; Aquinas's proofs ; Averroes's truth ; Machiavelli's Prince; title: Early modernity, 1500-1800. The Valladolid debate ; More's Utopia ; Dr. Faustus's bargain ; Hobbes's Leviathan ; Descartes's deceiver ; Descartes's ergo ; Descartes's firm foundation ; Calderon's dream ; Pascal's wager ; Spinoza's worm and Leibniz's leap ; Huygens's planetarians ; Locke's locked room ; Leibniz's textual limit ; Leibniz's windmill ; Leibniz's mythic goddess ; Aldrich's box paradoxes ; Mandeville's bees ; Hume's self-seeking ; Hume's shade of blue ; Kant's things in themselves ; Kant's errand boy ; Kant's peaceful vision ; Kant's starry heaven ; Kant's reorientation ; Condorcet's paradox ; Hegel's reality ; Schopenhauer's annoyance; title: The recent past, 1800-1900. J.S. Mill's epiphany ; Darwin's ape ; Saxe's puzzling elephant ; Herbert Spencer's impatience ; Lord Kelvin's sun ; The lady or the tiger ; William James's freedom ; William James's squirrel ; Kropotkin's cooperators ; Nietzsche's revaluation ; Nietzsche's long run ; Lasswitz's library ; Frege's morning star ; Durkheim's suicides ; The monkey's paw ; Wells's neomen ; Borel's monkeys ; Russell's king of France ; Russell's chicken ; Angell's illusion ; Richardson's coastline ; Duchamp's urinal ; Wittgenstein's poker ; Collingwood's presuppositions ; Collingwood's history trap ; Teilhard's omega; title: The current era, 1900 to the present. Sci-fi psychology ; Ayer's nonsense ; Popper's falsity ; Boulding's menace ; Austin's verbs ; Austin's excuses ; Turing's test ; Urmson's apples ; Simon's satisficing ; The prisoner's dilemma ; A streetcar named disaster ; Putnam's twin earth ; Dr. Psycho's prescription ; Vagrant predicates ; Searle's Chinese room ; The bell curve's slant ; Derrida's demolition.