Nature and Understanding explores the prospect of looking from a scientific point of view at such central ideas of traditional metaphysics as the simplicity of nature, its comprehensibility, or its systematic integrity. Rescher seeks to describe - in a way accessible to philosophers and nonphilosoph[...]

First published in 1992. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book is a study in the methodology of philosophical inquiry. It expounds and defends the thesis that systematization is the proper instrument of philosophical inquiry and that the effective pursuit of philosophy's mission calls for constructing a doctrinal system that answers our questions in a[...]

This text tackles the major questions of philosophical inquiry, pondering the nature of truth and existence. It argues that the development of knowledge is a practice, pursued by humans because we have a need for its products. This approach satisfies our urge to make sense of our surroundings.[...]

G.W. Leibniz's "Monadology," one of the most important pieces of the Leibniz corpus, is at once one of the great classics of modern philosophy and one of its most puzzling productions. Because the essay is written in so condensed and compact a fashion, for almost three centuries it has baffled and b[...]

Contemporary philosopher John Searle has characterized Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) as "the most intelligent human being who has ever lived." The German philosopher, mathematician, and logician invented calculus (independently of Sir Isaac Newton), topology, determinants, binary arithmetic,[...]

Few ideas have played a more continuously prominent role throughout the history of philosophy than that of dialectic, which has figured on the philosophical agenda from the time of the Presocratics. The present book explores the philosophical promise of dialectic, especially in its dialogical versio[...]