It’s around now that the reviews pages and the literary supplements carry lists of their Books of the Year. So what really worthwhile books on logic matters were first published in 2008? Alan Sokal’s Beyond the Hoax is amusing in parts but added less than I’d hoped to Intellectual Impostures; John P. Burgess’s collected papers are worth having together in Mathematics, Models and Modality (but content-wise, that doesn’t really count as a new book); Graham Priest’s second edition of Introduction to Non-classical Logic is a great textbook but isn’t exactly full of news for old logic hands! So ok, what can I particularly commend that pushes ideas on in a novel and thought-provoking way?
Ermmm …. This is really rather embarrasing. I can’t think of anything to suggest! The books that I have read and most enjoyed recently seem all to have been published in previous years.
Ah, Hartry Field’s Saving Truth from Paradox was published this year, but it is still sitting on my shelves waiting to be read. But what have I missed? Perhaps I’m forgetting or have just not registered the publication of some terrific books over the last year in the areas of philosophy of science/philosophy of logic/philosophy of maths. What would you recommend from the class of ’08?
Goldreich, O. Computational Complexity: A Conceptual Perspective
The Probabilistic Mind (Chater & Oaksford)
Human Reasoning and Cognitive Science (Stenning & Van Lambalgen)
Andre Carus, Carnap and 20th Century Thought. Cambridge University Press
Gillian Russell, Truth in Virtue of Meaning. Oxford University Press
Ulrich Kohlenbach, Applied Proof Theory, Springer
Douglas Patterson, New Essays on Tarski and Philosophy, Oxford University Press
Paolo Mancosu, ed., The Philosophy of Mathematical Practice, Oxford University Press
If prepared to concede this year’s harvest as not vintage, why not return to the future with the justly famous ’52 Dialectica :
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119884067/issue
Hard to top for a collection of seminal ideas. Available w/o cost online.
(H/T R. Zach for citing it)