Among the questions in contemporary cultural debate, crossing the disciplines from literature to philosophy to the history of science and the social sciences, are those concerned with realism. Is there a knowable reality? This is no mere abstract and theoretical issue; the current cultural wars surround it. The questions of realism, representation and reference are at the intellectual route of contentions within the academy about what is knowable, what are the methods by which knowledge is ever absolute or always to be measured instrumentally, and whether it is possible to affirm a realist position that does not cloak a prior ideological investment. George Levine is an advocate of exchange between disparate schools of thought. In this text, he has brought together philosophers, historians and literary critics - including Richard Rorty, J. Hillis Miller, Robert Scholes, Gillian Beer, Simon Schaffer, Bas C. van Fraassen, N. Katherine Hayles, Bruce Robbins, Paisley Livingston, Harriet Ritvo, Elizabeth Ermarth, Paul Churchland, Richard Miller and Ludmilla Jordanova. Their essays are based on papers originally given at an international conference on the realism/representation issues. The perspectives are various and even contentious, but they address and illuminate one another, testing the problems of epistemology against history and culture. The volume juxtaposes literary, philosophical and historical texts; subjects modes of representation to strong sceptical analysis; and presents realism as an issue that demands reconsideration from all involved.
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