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The Limits of Explanation: Limited Explanations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2010

Stephen R. L. Clark
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Extract

When I was first approached to read a paper at the conference from which this volume takes its beginning I expected that Flint Schier, with whom I had taught a course on the Philosophy of Biology in my years at Glasgow, would be with us to comment and to criticize. I cannot let this occasion pass without expressing once again my own sense of loss. I am sure that we would all have gained by his presence, and hope that he would find things both to approve, and disapprove, in the following venture.

Type
Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 27 , March 1990 , pp. 195 - 210
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 1990

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References

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2 Dawkins, Richard, The Blind Watchmaker (London: Longman, 1986)Google Scholar. See my review article, Times Literary Supplement 4356 (26 09 1986), 1047–9Google Scholar. The same point was made by J. J. C. Smart after the opening paper of the conference.

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13 I must at once remind my readers that ‘the Theory of Forms’, so called, is not exhausted by a few remarks in Plato's Meno, Phaedo and Republic. A good introduction to what I intend by the theory is Findlay, J. N., Ascent to the Absolute (London: Allen & Unwin, 1970).Google Scholar

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