Vincent Hendricks Wins Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2006

Vincent Hendricks' book Mainstream and Formal Epistemology, Cambridge, 2006, just won the Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2006. Hendricks is Professor of Formal Philosophy at Roskilde University in Copenhagen, Editor-in-Chief for Synthese and Synthese Library, Editor of Trends in Logic (Studia Logica Library), and Director of PHILOG and Editor-in-chief of PHINEWS.

From the original announcement:

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries is the premier source for reviews of academic books, electronic media, and Internet resources of interest to those in higher education.

Every year Choice publishes a list of Outstanding Academic Titles that were reviewed during the previous calendar year. This prestigious list reflects the best in scholarly titles reviewed by Choice and brings with it the extraordinary recognition of the academic library community.

The list is quite selective: it contains approximately ten percent of some 7,000 works reviewed in Choice each year. Choice editors base their selections on the reviewer's evaluation of the work, the editor's knowledge of the field, and the reviewer's record. In awarding Outstanding Academic Titles, the editors apply several criteria to reviewed titles: (1) overall excellence in presentation and scholarship, (2) importance relative to other literature in the field, (3), distinction as a first treatment of a given subject in book or electronic form, (4) originality or uniqueness of treatment, (5) value to undergraduate students, and (6) importance in building undergraduate library collections.

Choice Review:

Hendricks (Roskilde Univ., Denmark) identifies several central epistemological concerns and teases out various theoretical solutions. He begins with mainstream epistemologies, works through various formal epistemologies, and ends with an outline for a new research program called "plethoric epistemology," which combines insights of both mainstream and formal researchers. The aim of the work is twofold: to introduce mainstream and formal epistemologists to one another, and to give theoretical unity to a fractured discipline. It succeeds admirably on both fronts, and brings a fresh perspective to every topic it touches. This important work should spark conversation between traditional theorists and their more formally minded colleagues, and inform each of what the other has been up to. It should also bring unity and renewed purpose to the fragmented field of contemporary epistemology. This book is mandatory reading for epistemologists of all stripes, particularly those seeking a crash course in formal epistemology (and those just wondering what "formal epistemology" is). Its importance cannot be overemphasized. Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty/researchers.