Abstract

This is one of three books edited or written by Rescher to be published in one year's time. Primarily a collection of material from professional literature of the past decade, there are five new pieces. All the essays use logical and conceptual analysis: there is a historical and a systematic section. Some of the historical essays draw on Rescher's scholarship in the history of logic, including Arabic logic. One chapter discusses some logical difficulties of Leibniz' metaphysics. The systematic section opens with two articles written with Carey Joynt on the epistemology of history. New pieces are an analysis of "control," and one on welfare economics. There are essays on innate ideas, truth, and metaphysics. The most recent articles involve probability and the logic of decision; there is an article dealing with Markov Chains and Discrete State Systems. Attractive minor contributions are included as well, giving the book a wide range both of subject-matter and significance.--M. B. M.