He contends that, while descriptive metaphysics views "philosophical enquiry as a sort of self-contained activity of conceptual analysis immune to revision by science," revisionary metaphysics, on the other hand, views "metaphysics as the general end of theory on a continuum with science" (5). A significant aim of McHenry's historical situating is to highlight differing views on the relationship between science and metaphysics. "Cool analysis was in grand speculation was out" (2). However, with the ascent of logical positivism in the 1930s the interest in ontology waned. McHenry notes that early in the century all three philosophers developed event ontologies in conversation with the emerging relativity theory (2). The volume opens with a helpful introductory chapter that situates the author's project within the history of twentieth century philosophy and physical cosmology, starting with the work of three Cambridge philosophers, Whitehead, Russell, and C. The position I defend is revisionary because it overthrows our ordinary common-sense modes of thought naturalistic because it begins to construct metaphysical principles from the natural sciences - physics and cosmology in particular and realistic because its naturalism demands the scientist's robust sense of a mind-independent reality as a foundation for enquiry into the nature of the physical world (viii). For those readers who are eager to place this pigeon in its proper hole, McHenry characterizes his project as revisionary, naturalistic, and realistic. Quine, and, most especially, Alfred North Whitehead, the author's aim is to frame an event ontology that is fully consistent with contemporary physics, especially physicists' attempts to create a unified theory or so-called Theory of Everything (TOE). Building on the work of Bertrand Russell, W. McHenry is attempting, fallibly if not immodestly, nothing less than "a general theory of the world" (vii). Don't be fooled by the slender dimensions of this volume. McHenry beautifully illustrates, after more than a half-century of slumber the speculative impulse has been reawakened. After decades of careful and productive philosophical work, it may be that the seams of descriptive metaphysics have been all but mined out.
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