Surfaces

Despite its importance in the sciences and the plastic arts, the concept of a surface has been virtually ignored bt philosophers - mentioned in the philosophical literature since the time of Aristotle, but never accorded the full investigation that Avum Stroll provides in this book. Stoll shows that the concept plays an essential role in many philosophical problems (Our knowledge of the external world, abstract ideas, foundationalism); it is also important in it's own right and for its bearing on future research projects in philosophy and in the psychology of perception. Stroll's first line of questioning - how we define and perceive a surface - issues in a powerful chalenge to one of the main assuptions of traditional epistemology. Then he looks into "the geometry of ordinary speech" - the terms we use to organize and structure the world we inhabit ("margin," "border," "limit," "boundary," "edge") - and shows how this informal topological system reesembles and differs from the mathematical science of geometry. In doing so, he opens up a novel philosophical issue to further discussion and research.