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Wandering Significance: An Essay on Conceptual Behaviour | 
 enlarge | Author: Mark Wilson
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Category: Book
List Price: $55.00
Buy New: $42.55
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Avg. Customer Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 155549
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 690
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.7
Dimensions (in): 9.6 x 6.7 x 1.4
ISBN: 0199532303
Dewey Decimal Number: 121.4
EAN: 9780199532308
ASIN: 0199532303
Publication Date: May 1, 2008
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Product Description
Mark Wilson presents a highly original and broad-ranging investigation of the way we get to grips with the world conceptually, and the way that philosophical problems commonly arise from this. Words such as color, shape, solidity exemplify the commonplace conceptual tools we employ to describe and order the world around us. But the world's goods are complex in their behaviors and we often overlook the subtle adjustments that our evaluative terms undergo as their usage becomes gradually adapted to different forms of supportive circumstance. Wilson not only explains how these surprising strategies of hidden management operate, but also tells the astonishing story of how faulty schemes and great metaphysical systems sometimes spring from a simple failure to recognize the innocent wanderings to which our descriptive words are heir.
Wilson combines traditional philosophical concerns about human conceptual thinking with illuminating data derived from a large variety of fields including physics and applied mathematics, cognitive psychology, and linguistics. Wandering Significance offers abundant new insights and perspectives for philosophers of language, mind, and science, and will also reward the interest of psychologists, linguists, and anyone curious about the mysterious ways in which useful language obtains its practical applicability.
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| Customer Reviews:
 The new millenia's best philosophy book thus far March 19, 2007
16 out of 17 found this review helpful
First, the negative review below is absurd. The breadth, depth, and significance of Wilson's real world examples are staggering.
Unfortunately, contemporary philosophers' lack of basic science and math training has rendered much of Wilson's oevre inaccessible to many people in the field. Because of this, while philosophers of science and mathematics have at least for the last ten years or so widely regarded Wilson as one of the most important living philosophers, philosophers in "core analytic" (epistemology, language, logic, and mind) have for the most part not caught up.
Wandering Significance rectifies this. The booklength format allows him to clearly and entertainingly explain his fascinating examples to people who don't yet have the requisite science or math skills (this book will make anyone who loves the truth seek to acquire those skills).
Wilson uses real world cases from the history of science, mathematics, and folklore to argue against what he calls the classical account of concepts (the many theses of which are given by him at the end of Chapter 3), chunks of which are presupposed by most living philosophers. In a fascinating discussion, Wilson shows how the classical view arose from stresses in physics and applied mathematics that were coming to a head at the end of the ninteenth century. But he also shows how attention to the development of applied mathematics and physics completely undermines the classical view. With this critique he is able to show that the methodology of a lot of contemporary philosophy (especially contemporary metaphysics, but really most forms of "conceptual analysis" that rely overly much on a-prioristic thought experiments) is profoundly mistaken.
Positively, Wilson is able to suggest an extremely plausible (non-classical) picture of word meaning and the interface between the world and people that combines virtues of Quine and Problems of Philosophy era Russell.
In short, this is a paradigm shattering book that all people who love the truth should read.
One last note, the book is a pleasure to read, perhaps the only philosophy book since the 19th century where the author's wit and jokes contribute to the book. Moreover, unlike most such attempts (e.g. Fodor on his relatives, Derrideans with their horrifically bad and painfully unenlightening puns) Wilson's wit is actually funny.
Superb March 22, 2006
16 out of 17 found this review helpful
I seriously doubt whether the above reviewer has actually read this book. Rather, he seems to be discharging some unwarranted and misguided hostility. The learning displayed in this book is massive. Its masterful arguments are on the highest intellectual level. And I am far from alone in this assessment. Here is what Michael Friedman, a prominent contemporary philosopher whose expertise ranges over the topics of Wilson's book, wrote: "Wandering Significance is a brilliant and highly original contribution to some of the main classical problems of philosophy, employing a novel (and very learned) combination of philosophy of language with the history and philosophy of science. Wilson thereby presents a radically new version of a "neo-pragmatist" approach to concepts and conceptual mastery (in the tradition of Dewey, Quine, and the later Wittgenstein) which far surpasses all previous versions in depth and specificity of detail. A major intellectual breakthrough." But the book speaks for itself.
 Extremely trite. February 20, 2006
2 out of 43 found this review helpful
The author displays very little knowledge of the scientific issues he discusses; his knowledge of the relevant history is even more spotty. It is a work of distressingly low quality.
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