Stevens's famous criterion for poetry—"It should give pleasure"—informed his epistolary aesthetic as well; these letters stimulate one's appetite for poetry as they valorize the imagination and the senses. They also offer fascinating glimpses of Stevens as family man, insurance executive, connoisseur, and friend.FROM THE BOOK:"Next to the passion flower I love fuchsias, and no kidding. . . . Down among the Pennsylvania Germans there was a race of young men . . . who carved willow fans. These men would take a bit of willow stick about a foot long, peel it and with nothing more than a jackknife carve it into something that looked like a souvenir of Queen Anne's lingerie. The trouble that someone took to invent fuchsias makes me think of these willow fans. However it is a dark and dreary day today and who am I to be frivolous under such circumstances."—from a letter to Wilson Taylor, August 20, 1947

    It is the only work in which his metaphysical ideas are stated systematically and completely, and his metaphysics are the heart of his philosophical system as a whole. Sherburne has rearranged the text in a way designed to lead the student logically and coherently through the intricacies of the system without losing the vigor of Whitehead's often brilliant prose. "The Key renders Process and Reality pedagogically accessible for the first time."—Journal of Religion

    V. Quine's most important and influential, such as "Truth by Convention," "Carnap and Logical Truth," "On Carnap's Views on Ontology," "The Scope and Language of Science," and "Posits and Reality." Many of these essays deal with unresolved issues of central interest to philosophers today. About half of them are addressed to "a wider public than philosophers." The remainder are somewhat more professional and technical. This new edition of The Ways of Paradox contains eight essays that appeared after publication of the first edition, and it retains the seminal essays that must be read by anyone who seeks to master Quine's philosophy.Quine has been characterized, in The New York Review of Books, as "the most distinguished American recruit to logical empiricism, probably the contemporary American philosopher most admired in the profession, and an original philosophical thinker of the first rank." His "philosophical innovations add up to a coherent theory of knowledge which he has for the most part constructed single-handed." In The Ways of Paradox new generations of readers will gain access to this philosophy.

    It presents a unique blend of theory and applications, with special emphasis on mathematical modelling, computational techniques and examples from the biological sciences. It is appropriate for students in applied mathematics, biostatistics, computational biology, computer science, physics, and statistics.

    Included are his three major collections of poetry: White Buildings, The Bridge, and Key West, as well as a number of his uncollected poems; a selection from his letters and prose; and Waldo Frank's Introduction to the 1958 edition of Crane's poetry.