Books Received

BOOK REVIEWS 203 One follows his progressive classifications (from animal movement to action, divided into skill and rule, considering acts which may be restrictive or enabling, constitutive [definitional] or not, together with a number of other styles of subdivision) to an examination of language acts without once encountering a philosophical issue that might be resolved, clarified, or even stated by means of this hierarchy of definitions. Taylor's book, on the other hand, has a target. He argues that any description of behavior as action is a description in terms of goals and brings this argument to bear on a fair sample of the modern literature of psychology. His objections to attempts to define behavior atomistically , in a language of events, are cogently and skillfully argued. But it is questionable whether, as he seems to think; psychological theories must therefore be purposive theories. If mechanicalbehavioristic theories fail because the language of behavior is irreducibly purposive, the proper inference to draw might well be that a psychological as opposed to a physiological theory is impossible. For it is not at all clear, in Taylor or elsewhere, how a purposive explanation could, in the usual sense of the term, be theoretical. --A. R. L. Robert G. Colodny, ed., Beyond the Edge o] Certainty. Eassays in Contemporary Science and Philosophy. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1965. ~- University of Pittsburgh Series in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. II. Pp. vii + 287. $8.75. Robert G. Colodny, ed., Mind and Cosmos. Essays in Contemporary Science and Philosophy. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1966. =- University of Pittsburgh Series in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. III. Pp. xviii § 362. $8.00. Philosophers of science succumb readily to the symposium. In these two volumes at least there is some coherence, due to the fact that some of the contributors address themselves to large-scale epistemological issues in science. In volume II, Hanson and Ellis discuss classical laws of motion in their historical context, Putnam (II) and Markenau (III), the philosophical implications of quantum physics, and Feyerabend (II) and Shapere (III) debate the merits of that positivist legacy in the philosophy of science, the dichotomy of observational and theoretical statements, Feyerabend rejecting the dichotomy and Shapere qualifying Feyerabend. Bromberger (III) offers and rejects some of the logical objections to the covering law theory of explanation. So far so good. Simon on the relation of computers to intelligence (III) and Hempel and Salmon on induction and scientific inference (III) add nothing new. Hawkins (II) deals rather fancifully, though interestingly, with thermodynamics, purpose, and some philosophers . Morrison (II) reviews the current state of thinking in cosmology, but the space is not adequate for the purpose. Gold (III) raises the intriguing question, why should physical processes have a temporal dimension, but does not shed much light on it. Rescher's article on "The Ethical Dimensions of Scientific Research" (II) reads as if it were an assigned topic. Joseph Clark's grandiose summation of the nature of physics and its relation to human culture (III) commits atrocities against the English language matched only by the effusive introductions of Mr. Colodny to both volumes. I should add that Volume II, produced by Prentice Hall, is a good one-hundred pages shorter than Volume III, brought out by the Pittsburgh Press, and costs seventy-five cents more. There must be a moral. --A. R.L. BOOKS RSCEIVED Anton, John P., and George Kimball Plochmann, eds., "Science, Philosophy and Our Educational Tasks": Papers for a symposium held at the annual meeting of the American Philosophical Association, Western Division, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on April 29, 1964, in Bu]]alo Studies, II: 2 (July, 1966). Buffalo: State University of New York at Buffalo, 1966. Pp. 67. --The University of Buffalo Studies. Paper. Bausola, Adriano, Etica e Politica nel Pensiero di Benedetto Croce. Milano: Societa Editrice Vitae Pensiero, 1966. Pp. ix + 265. Paper. Buchler, Justus, Metaphysics o] Natural Complexes. New York: Columbia University Press, 1966. Pp. viii + 195. $6.00. Chapman, Harmon M., Sensations and Phenomenology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1966. Pp. ix + 163. Cherry, Colin, On Human Communication: A Review, a Survey and a Criticism. Cambridge, Mass.: The M. I. T. Press, 1966. Pp. xiv + 337. (This is an...