In this much anticipated revision and translation of Scienza e Retorica, Marcello Pera argues that rhetoric is central to the making of scientific knowledge.

Pera begins with an attack of what he calls the "Cartesian syndrome"--the fixation on method common to both defenders of traditional philosophy of science and its detractors. He argues that in assuming the primacy of methodological rules, both sides get it wrong. Scientific knowledge is neither the simple mirror of nature nor a cultural construct imposed by contingent interests, thus we must replace the idea of scientific...

FREE VERSE EDITIONS SERIES, edited by Jon Thompson TRANSLATED BY CLARISSA BOTSFORD A darkly humorous exploration of the human body and its various functions in poetic prose, Valerio Magrelli's The Condominium of the Flesh, a personal chronicle of his clinical experience, catalogues a life history of ailments without ever being pathological. Every sensation and malfunction is placed under the subjective microscope of the poet's eye and examined in excruciating and obsessive detail. This Gray's Anatomy of the soul leads the reader on an inside-out voyage of discovery, with many surprises on the...