Susan Stebbing: Philosophical Papers [Hardcover]

This volume is the first published selection of the writings of Susan Stebbing (1885-1943, an important figure in the development of analytic philosophy. Siobhan Chapman provides notes and an introduction presenting an overview of Stebbing's work and an account of the significance of each of the selected papers.Susan Stebbing (1885-1943) was an important figure in the development of analytic philosophy. She was author of the ground-breaking workA Modern Introduction to Logic(1930), critic of what she saw as the inaccuracies in terminology and method of many of her most celebrated contemporaries, and originator of the concept of 'directional analysis', which was foundational to the 'Cambridge' school during the 1930s. She was also a leading proponent of public philosophy, and in books such asPhilosophy and the Physicists(1937) andThinking to Some Purpose(1939) she wrote for a general readership, exposing the dangers of misleading phrasing and implicit ideologies in the language used by authority figures such as scientists, politicians, and religious leaders. This volume is the first published selection of Stebbing's writings, bringing together sixteen papers from across the span of her thinking. The papers are grouped thematically into four parts, on 'Logic', 'Science', 'Analysis' and 'Ideology'. In the Introduction, Siobhan Chapman presents an overview of Stebbing's work and an account of the significance of each of the selected papers, and extensive notes offer the reader the opportunity to engage with the published works referred to in the papers. The volume includes a bibliography of Stebbing's numerous publications.Part I. Logic1. A Reply to Some Charges against Logic (1915)2. Logical Constructions and Knowledge through Description (1931)3. Mr Joseph's Defence of Free Thinking in Logistics (1933)Part II. Science4. Materialism in the Light of Modern Scientific Thought (1928)5. Nebulous Philosophy - Jean