First published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

I suppose Joseph Agassi's best and dearest self-description, his cher- ished wish, is to practice what his 1988 book promises: The Gentle Art of Philosophical Polemics. But for me, and for so many who know him, our Agassi is tough-minded, not tender, not so gentle. True to his beloved critical thinking, he is ever the falsificationist, testing himself of course as much as everyone else. How, he asks himself, can he engage others in their own self-critical exploration? Irritate? Question their logic, their facts, their presuppositions, their rationales? Subvert their reasoning, uncover their...

An outstanding feature of this book is the broad range of the contributors, drawn from Europe, the Middle East and North America, testifying both to the range of Professor Agassi's interests and the geographical spread of his influence.
Most contributors use Agassi's ideas as a springboard to engage in debate on issues, or offer a contribution in an area that interests him. In this volume contributors consider such questions as Agassi's philosophy of education, in practice as well as in theory; the impact of psychologism in philosophy; the origins of critical rationalism in the Bible;...

In our papers on the rationality of magic, we distinghuished, for purposes of analysis, three levels of rationality. First and lowest (rationalitYl) the goal- directed action of an agent with given aims and circumstances, where among his circumstances we included his knowledge and opinions. On this level the magician's treatment of illness by incantation is as rational as any traditional doctor's blood-letting or any modern one's use of anti-biotics. At the second level (rationalitY2) we add the element of rational thinking or thinking which obeys some set of explicit rules, a level which is...

This set of essays is concerned with the explanation of large scale social change. Concentration is on the social stagnation characteristic of agrarian circumstances, the conditions for exit from that world, and the varied social orders that inhabit, sometimes precariously, the modern world community. The distinguished contributors from archaeology, anthropology, sociology, economic history and philosophy, have all been stimulated by the work of Ernest Gellner, and the essays are in dialogue with his view of our social condition.

x philosophy when he inaugurated a debate about the principle of methodologi- cal individualism, a debate which continues to this day, and which has inspired a literature as great as any in contemporary philosophy. Few collections of material in the general area of philosophy of social science would be considered complete unless they contained at least one of Watkins's many contributions to the discussion of this issue. In 1957 Watkins published the flrst of a series of three papers (1957b, 1958d and 196Oa) in which he tried to codify and rehabilitate metaphysics within the Popperian...

An outstanding feature of this book is the broad range of the contributors, drawn from Europe, the Middle East and North America, testifying both to the range of Professor Agassi's interests and the geographical spread of his influence.
Most contributors use Agassi's ideas as a springboard to engage in debate on issues, or offer a contribution in an area that interests him. In this volume contributors consider such questions as Agassi's philosophy of education, in practice as well as in theory; the impact of psychologism in philosophy; the origins of critical rationalism in the Bible;...

In our papers on the rationality of magic, we distinghuished, for purposes of analysis, three levels of rationality. First and lowest (rationalitYl) the goal directed action of an agent with given aims and circumstances, where among his circumstances we included his knowledge and opinions. On this level the magician's treatment of illness by incantation is as rational as any traditional doctor's blood-letting or any modern one's use of anti-biotics. At the second level (rationalitY2) we add the element of rational thinking or thinking which obeys some set of explicit rules, a level which is...

I suppose Joseph Agassi's best and dearest self-description, his cher- ished wish, is to practice what his 1988 book promises: The Gentle Art of Philosophical Polemics. But for me, and for so many who know him, our Agassi is tough-minded, not tender, not so gentle. True to his beloved critical thinking, he is ever the falsificationist, testing himself of course as much as everyone else. How, he asks himself, can he engage others in their own self-critical exploration? Irritate? Question their logic, their facts, their presuppositions, their rationales? Subvert their reasoning, uncover their...