Science, Language, and the Human Condition

Many scientific developments of the twentieth century (the Heisenberg "Uncertainty" principle, for example) have suggested that the universe is disorderly, chaotic, and irrational. Consequently, humankind began to find itself without a "natural" place in the universe. If humans bear no significant relationship to other parts of the universe, must we conclude the existence is meaningless?

Science, Language and the Human Condition disputes such a conclusion. Morton A. Kaplan develops an integration of philosophy of science and the theory of language. He argues that if we understand the nature of knowledge, language, and science, and how all relate to one another and to objective reality, then we will understand our place in the universe. Kaplan uses rigorous analytical tools to explore the complementary weakneses of pairs of major thinkers: Kuhn and Popper, Quine and Kripke, Wittgenstein and Derrida, and Karl Marx and Milton Friedman. The strengths of their conflicting approaches are reassembled here, for the first time, into a consistent world view.

Kaplan argues that every method of inquiry, including inquiry into language, requires supplementation by complementary approaches. He calls his approach "analytical pragmatism." Philosophers, scientists, social scientists, and humanists will discover important implications for understanding the persistent problems of how we acquire knowledge, language, and values.