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that Dewey's metaphysical empiricism remained more indebted to Kant and Hegel than is commonly supposed;
that Dewey owed more to the influence of Wundt than is commonly believed;
that the influence of Peirce and James was not as significant for the development of Dewey's theories of mind and truth as has been argued in the past;
and that Dewey's pragmatic theory of knowledge never really abandoned idealism.

Shook's exposition of the unity of Dewey's thought challenges a large scholarly industry devoted to suppressing or explaining away the consistency between Dewey's early thought and his later work. In every respect, Dewey's Empirical Theory of Knowledge and Reality is a provocative and engaging study that will occupy a unique niche in this field. It is certain to stimulate discussion and controversy, forcing Dewey traditionalists out of habitual modes of thought and transforming our conventional understanding of the development of classical American philosophy.

Charts the historical development of induction and challenges contemporary understandings of the concept and its foundations.

The problem of induction continues to vex and beguile. How can we reliably draw universal conclusions from limited observations? In Induction, John P. McCaskey steps back and rethinks long-held assumptions, tracing the ideas of Socrates and Aristotle in ancient Greece to those of Karl Popper in the twentieth century.

This comprehensive account does not look at how people of the past answered the questions we ask today. Instead, it asks: How did they understand the very meaning of the words epagōgē in Greek, inductio in Latin, istiqrāʾ in Arabic, Induktion in German, and induction in English? McCaskey’s careful treatment of texts in their context dispels many long-standing myths, and importantly, he introduces us to a now-unfamiliar way to think about what induction is—a way in which there simply is no “problem of induction.” McCaskey reveals that the problem was one of our own making and that an accurate history may help us recover old ways—and thereby introduce new ways—to think about the whole idea. A must-read for philosophers, historians of ideas, and anyone interested in the scientific method.

An innovative account of listening and empire-building in 17th- and 18th-century China.

The Emperor’s New Epistemology explores how listening shaped knowledge and empire-building in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century China. As the Manchu dynasty expanded deep into Inner Asian territories deemed foreign by the majority-Han population, the Qing Empire’s musical culture encompassed the sounds of Mongols, Uyghurs, and Tibetans, as well as Western music brought by Jesuit and other Christian missionaries. Lester Hu reveals that this diversity transformed not only Qing court culture but the very grounds on which knowledge and power could be established.

In one revealing episode from 1692, the Kangxi Emperor (1654–1722) misinterpreted a key term of Classical Chinese music after studying European music with the Jesuits. Hu situates this anecdote within the political, social, and epistemic shifts that transformed late-imperial China. As Hu shows, listening was an instrument of Qing imperial authority: Knowledge about music, language, and even the universe could only be verified through the emperor’s ears. Furthermore, listening facilitated new theories of empirical knowledge, which both lent themselves to Qing-imperial ideology and generated new epistemic tensions. By exploring their echoes in similar shifts in early modern Europe, Hu’s book brings a global perspective to the study of music in the early modern world and reconsiders the transcendental ground on which such comparative and intercultural knowledge is possible.

Many of the seemingly bland assertions and bald statements of the eighteenth-century philosopher David Hume contain more than the mind immediately perceives. Author John Valdimir Price contends that an understanding of Hume's writings cannot be separated from an understanding of his life. By examining the works of Hume, Price shows the way in which an ironic way of seeing events and an ironic mode of expression permeated Hume's life and writings.

Price examines Hume's irony as it is exhibited in letters to his friends and in his writings concerned with morality, people, philosophy, politics, history, and above all religion. Hume's opinions on life in general are stated in works ranging from the Treatise of Human Nature and the Essays, Moral and Political, through the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding and the Enquiry concerning Principles of Morals, to the Dialogue and Four Dissertations of his maturity.

Price feels that Hume's recognition of the ironic in life came about from his perception of the disproportion between human hopes and human accomplishments. The rhetorical consequences of applying reason to a duality in human nature creates the ironic mode. Hume conceived man's opposing tendencies as his willingness to commit himself orally to a concept, a dogma, an idea, or an ideology, and his unwillingness to involve himself in the logical and rhetorical implications of articulating those principles.

Hume's use of the ironic mode in his writings provides him with a means of challenging certain dogmatic assumptions common to thought, particularly to traditional religious thought; it acts as a mask for his sceptical intentions, and it is an implied criticism of many ideas. In his political writing, Hume frequently implied that the question under argument was almost too ridiculous to deserve serious treatment. This tactic was effectively employed in the Account of Stewart, in which Hume came to the defense of a friend.

In his most profitable venture, the History of England, Hume not only used irony to advantage, but developed a new approach to the writing of history—the use of narrative. He presented history as a series of more or less connected events, not as a series of "right" or "wrong" attitudes.

The author believes that Hume's initial religious scepticism, combined with the predominant satiric-ironic mode in the literature of his time, led him to seek irony as a method of self expression. This scepticism, which permeated all of Hume's attitudes toward life, reached its most complete expression in the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, which accepted reason as its guide, but also accepted experience as its master.