Isis 100 (4):964-965 (
2009)
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Abstract
The Cambridge Companion to Logical Empiricism is probably the best single volume on logical empiricism to date—and also the worst companion to it. The challenge for the editors is to bring together a volume that is neither an anthology of published “landmark” essays, with commentary surveying the topic and the field at once, that has the educational and even inspirational purpose of a Reader, nor an encyclopedic collection of expository essays with the instructional purpose of a Handbook, nor a collection of recent polemical essays focused on more specialized topics that build on and develop previous scholarship—the purpose of conference proceedings or at least the hoped-for outcome of conferences. As a result, the essays in this volume strain with tensions between exposition and polemic, lecture notes and conference notes, topicality and territoriality.