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July 22, 2006
Book review of Soames history of analysis
Posted to Amazon.com:
I wish I'd had a book like this to read when I was an undergraduate in philosophy. It would have put so much more of the material I was studying at the time in context. Soames has selected the essential figures of the first half of the 20th century, together with their essential arguments, and explained their significance. His explanations are at once accessible to the layman, but also satisfying to the professional interested in the details of important arguments.
Of particular interest, I believe, is Soames recounting of the most basic points behind Russell's axiomatization of arithmetic, and explaining its philosophical significance in its era. Other introductory texts assert that this was done; few give us just enough of the axioms themselves, together with simple examples of their use in proving arithmetical propositions, together with their reduction to logic and set theory.
I do have minor gripes about the text, but they are small in comparison to the above. First, I would like to have seen a chapter on Frege. Soames' skills as an expositor would be well-suited to this task. When other philosophers (like Michael Dummett) have gone so far as to say that Frege was the fountainhead of the analytic movement, I would like too see how other philosophers with historical expertise approach the question.
Also one or two minor gripes about interpretation. On pages 402-404, Soames seems to say that Quine is some kind of phenomenalist, who thinks observation sentences report private sense experiences. Surely the bulk of evidence concerning Quine's views about observation sentences contradicts this. While Quine does think that impacts on our nerve endings help constitute the "stimulus meaning" of observation sentences, he does not think that these sentences are understood as referring to sense data. Observation sentences are about physical objects, like "Rabbit!"
But this aside, I've already purchased Volume II, and I'm looking forward to the learning experience.
Posted by Ben at July 22, 2006 01:35 PM