Proof and Explanation: The Virginia Lectures by John Wisdom

John Wisdom was Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge University through the 1950s and 1960s, holding the chair that had been Wittgenstein’s. Later he taught in America and was elected President of the American Philosophical Association, Pacific Division. This book is based on previously unpublished lectures that Wisdom delivered at the University of Virginia. Its context goes significantly beyond that of his other books. Here he is concerned with how misunderstandings about what it is to prove something or what it is to explain something can infect our thinking in many different fields. Wisdom develops a controversial account of what he calls case-by-case procedures as he tries to dispel those misunderstandings and illuminate the nature of proof and explanation, as these occur in physics, psychology, ethics and everyday situations.