Abstract

A brief but meaty survey of the immediate background of contemporary Oxford analysis, concentrating chiefly on the rise and fall of Logical Atomism, with some asides on the Logical Positivist movement in England. Mr. Urmson describes pre-Oxford analytic tenets and techniques clearly and fairly, though in rather disorganized fashion, and presents, with considerable force, the arguments brought against them. These arguments are perhaps less destructive than Mr. Urmson himself seems to suppose, nor is it clear that they justify, philosophically, the widespread shift to the Oxford brand of analysis. But the book provides a useful historical explanation of the abandonment by English philosophers of the "reductive" analysis practiced by the atomists and positivists, and of their search for something different.--V. C. C.