It would take at least two workaday philosophers to keep up with Hilary Putnam. Philosophy in an Age of Science is a case in point. It’s a collection of papers, most of them previously published, devoted among lots of other things to: the philosophical interpretation of quantum mechanics, the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mathematics, philosophical ethics (analytic and otherwise), and the debate between solipsists, phenomenologists and realists about the epistemological and metaphysical status of ‘external’ objects. That is a long list and it is a long book. One might well doubt that there are philosophers positioned to say important things on all of these topics; but there are, and Putnam is one of them.

LRB 24 January 2013 | PDF Download