Nalini Bhushan & Stuart Rosenfeld (eds.): 'Of Minds and Molecules. New Philosophical Perspectives on Chemistry

摘要

It is a well-known fact that big publish-ing houses are very slow in recognizing new scholarly trends and even much slower in producing their books. In rap-idly growing fields, such as philosophy of chemistry, this causes particular problems. Authors and editors are forced to make a decision between small and fast publishers, with the risk of reaching only a smaller audience, and big and slow publishers, with the risk that the book is already outdated at the time of publication. The editors of this anthology decided for the latter in the mid-1990s, for patiently awaiting the re-sponse of a wider readership. However, when their editorial work was virtually finished, one of the editors, the chem-ists Stuart Rosenfeld, died in January 1999, so that it was up to his wife, the philosopher Nalini Bhushan, to finish the common enterprise alone. She had to wait another two years, before the book was eventually delivered in early 2001, with publication date as of 2000