Book Description
This book bears witness to the current reawakening of interest in Reid's philosophy. It first examines Reid's negative attack on the Way of Ideas, and finds him to be a devastating critic of his predecessors. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is a journal article from Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, published by Elsevier in 2005. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
Thomas Reid (1710-1796) presented a two-dimensional geometry of the visual field in his Inquiry into the human mind (1764), whose axioms are different from those of Euclidean plane geometry. Reid's 'geometry of visibles' is the same as the geometry of the surface of the sphere, described without reference to points and lines outside the surface itself. Interpreters of Reid seem to be divided in evaluating the significance of his geometry of visibles in the history of the discovery of non-Euclidean geometries. The question will be reexamined with particular attention given to his unpublished manuscripts. These include comments on Saccheri's work and Reid's repeated attempts to derive Euclid's parallel postulate from the axioms of incidence. ... Read more

Product Description
This Elibron Classics book is a facsimile reprint of a 1811 edition published in Edinburgh. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from The Review of Metaphysics, published by Thomson Gale on March 1, 2006. The length of the article is 623 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Reid, Thomas on Logic, Rhetoric and the Fine Arts: Papers on the Culture of the Mind.(Book review)
Author: Daniel N. Robinson
Publication: The Review of Metaphysics (Magazine/Journal)
Date: March 1, 2006
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 59Issue: 3Page: 672(2)

Article Type: Book review

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Book Description
1898. This little book is an attempt to present Reid in a fresh light, and in his relations to present-day thought. It deals with the Scottish chapter in that enduring alternation between agnostic despair and endeavor after perfect insight which seems to be a law of the philosophic progress of mankind. Thomas Reid, homebred and self-contained, is the national representative, in the eighteenth century, of the via media between these extremes. In the concluding chapter I have looked at the philosophical appeal to inspired data of Common Sense, in the wider light of the theistic philosophy of the universe, and not merely as part of an inductive science of the human mind. This connects the theistic postulate of spiritual reason, as the foundation of human experience, with Reid's appeal to the ultimate but often dormant necessities of human nature. Contents: Boyhood and Ancestry: Strachan and the Valley of the Dee; At Marischal College; New Machar and David Hume; Old Aberdeen: A Regent in King's College; Universal Skepticism versus Inspired Common Sense: An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense; Glasgow College: The Professor of Moral Philosophy; In Philosophical Retirement: Authorship in Old Age; Inspired Common Sense and Causation: Active or Moral Power in Man; The End; Retrospective and Critical; and Reid in the Nineteenth Century: Development of the Common Sense Philosophy: Reid in France: Reid and Hamilton; Reid and Scoto-Hegelian Idealism; Ethical or Theistic Final Faith. ... Read more

Product Description
1034 pages ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Very mediocre
This book is a great idea that didn't work out.The 'Nutshell' series of books is a brilliant thought.The idea is to 'outline the life and thought of some outstanding Scottish Christian leaders and thinkers, whose approach is relevant for a new millennium.'A worthy project to be sure, and one that offers possibilities of good scholarship.

The problem with the Nutshell book on Reid, however, is that it does not in fact outline the life of Reid as promised (there is almost no biographical information in the book), and it does not do a good job of explaining Reid's thought and demonstrating how it is relevant for today.Because it is a brief book--only 30 pages--I expected the author to outline Reid's key ideas in a concise and precise way.Instead, the book is rambling and over-complicated.I have heard it said that genious is making profound things simple and accessible; this book attempts that, but fails.

Further, in this book Houston offers a very one-dimensional view of Reid.He writes only about a couple aspects of his epistemology, but Reid was a far more complicated philosopher than this book represents him to be.A glance at the titles of the still-in-process Edinburgh Edition of Reid will convince anyone that this book falls short of actually communicating what Reid was in a nutshell.

Lest anyone think I am being to harsh on a book that has certain obvious size and scope limitations:If you want to read something immeasurably more clear, concise, and useful on Reid's life and thought, I suggest you read Knud Haakonssen's introduction to Reid's Practical Ethics.While this introduction is longer than the Nutshell volume, Haakonssen does more and better in the first five or ten pages than Houston does in thirty.

(The Princeton edition of Reid's Practical Ethics is out of print, so Haakonssen's introduction might be hard to find.However, it will soon be republished with a revised introduction as one of the volumes in the Edinburgh Edition of Reid.)

Further, there is much more useful material on Reid's life and thought in the Cambridge Companion to Reid or in Thomas Reid: Context, Influence and Significance, which is edited by the Nutshell author. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from The Review of Metaphysics, published by Philosophy Education Society, Inc. on June 1, 2000. The length of the article is 704 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Thomas Reid: Ethics, Aesthetics and the Anatomy of the Self.(Review) (book review)
Author: Marc Baer
Publication: The Review of Metaphysics (Refereed)
Date: June 1, 2000
Publisher: Philosophy Education Society, Inc.
Volume: 53Issue: 4Page: 926

Article Type: Book Review

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Book Description
This book provides a comprehensive account of Thomas Reid's social thought. Although he is inreasingly being seen as a central figure in the Scottish Enlightenment, there is still a tendency among historians to view Reid principally as David Hume's chief critic. By relating Reid's writings to their contemporary social and intellectual contexts, Peter Diamond seeks to qualify this traditional image. He argues that in fact Reid understood himself to be engaged in the Humean project of rendering the study of man systematic and improvable, by ascertaining the laws of human nature. Diamond also demonstrates that Reid's well-known appeal to the principle of common sense was not just a metaphysical response to Humean skepticism; it was also a rhetorical attempt to teach men to live virtuously in an emerging commercial society. ... Read more

Book Description
Word count: 3680. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from The Review of Metaphysics, published by Philosophy Education Society, Inc. on June 1, 2004. The length of the article is 610 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Reid, Thomas. Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man.(Book Review)
Author: Daniel N. Robinson
Publication: The Review of Metaphysics (Refereed)
Date: June 1, 2004
Publisher: Philosophy Education Society, Inc.
Volume: 57Issue: 4Page: 864(2)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more