EDITORIAL PREFACE

Joseph Agassi is a critic, a gadfly, a debunker and deflater; he is also a constructor, a speculator and an imaginative scholar. In the history and philosophy of science, he has been Peck’s bad boy, delighting in sharp and pungent criticism, relishing directness and simplicity, and enjoying it all enormously.

Agassi’s range is wide and his publications prolific. He has published serious studies in the historiography of science, applied sociology (on Hong Kong with I.C. Jarvie), foundations of anthropology, interpretive scientific biography (Faraday), Judaic studies, philosophy of technology (which Agassi pioneered, particularly in distinguishing it from the philosophy of science), as well as the many works on the logic, methodol­ogy, and history of science. Even as we go to press, Agassi’s works are appearing; we append an imperfect and selected bibliography.

For Agassi, the test of relevance is whether something is interesting. Eschewing the outward accoutrements of ‘serious scholarship’ when they mask dullness or lack of imagination, Agassi nevertheless pursues a con­structive path in his many essays - but not a straight line. Digression often becomes the most direct means to bring a point home. When Agassi is puzzling, perverse, provocative, it is part of the argument. His form of argument is not ‘analytic’ in the simple sense of a sequence of state­ments in logical form, but rather a dialectic where questions and answers interweave in a complex fabric. Yet, clarity is one of his goals. And his complaint is that he means exactly what he says, in the simplest way, but that readers and commentators often refuse to take him at his word. A kind of tribute to his provocativeness is the (private) punning comment once made by an eminent philosopher of science: “Cet Agasse m’agace”.

We have happily suffered the benefits (and enjoyed the irritations) of Professor Agassi’s collaboration in the Boston Colloquium for the

Philosophy of Science for more than a decade. He has been a dedicated and generous critic, affectionate friend, and receiver of criticisms. He has, above all else, never let philosophy become mere technique. These essays convey, we think, the seriousness, the disturbance and the intel­lectual vivacity of a skeptical and rationalist spirit.

R. S. Cohen

M. W. Wartofsky

Boston University Center for the Philosophy and History of Science, May 1975