Philosophy for Limited Beings - Modesty in Knowledge Claims

Scanning the afterword and bibliography of Stanley Rosen's illuminating collection of essays:
Hermeneutics as Politics: Second Edition ,  which reviews the meltdown of the Enlightenment epistemological narrative into the post-WWII post-modern demolition project, the author of this title popped up, and a wiki bio page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_C._Wimsatt  pointed to this later publication:


 Re-Engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings: Piecewise Approximations to Reality

   William C. Wimsatt

Although Wimsatt remains enchanted by the "just-so" stories of Darwinian orthodoxy, his reflections on the need for a sounder account of how knowledge is actually pursued are an illuminating model for those who claim to live by Psalm 23 and Proverbs 3:5-6.  Several short excerpts from the reviews posted at the Amazon listings suggest why this might be so:

Wimsatt is concerned with an aspect of the philosophy of biology that has not been a major concern of most philosophers in modern times. He is grappling with the issue of biological complexity and it is certainly an important set of questions. Indeed, it may be the central issue for the philosophy of biology.
--Richard Lewontin, Alexander Agassiz Research Professor,Harvard University

Wimsatt is very thoughtful and imaginative. He has a subtle position on reduction. He shows that it is necessary to hold to a sophisticated position on this issue, [and he] avoids reifying things at the upper level.
--Herbert Simon, recipient of the 1975 Nobel Prize in Economics

In the rich and impressive collection of essays gathered as Re-Engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings, Bill Wimsatt argues that philosophy of science, in its standard forms, has chosen the wrong models: the wrong models of scientists, of their products, and of their explanatory targets...Wimsatt is among the most creative, original, and empirically informed philosophers of our day. These essays clearly demonstrate his imagination, his mastery of many diverse literatures, and his eye for the big question...Few essay collections are integrated and systematic: Re-Engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings is an important exception.
--Kim Sterelny (Science 20080718)

About the Author

William C. Wimsatt (born May 27, 1941) is a professor in the Department of Philosophy, the Committee on Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science (previously Conceptual Foundations of Science), and the Committee on Evolutionary Biology at the University of Chicago. He specializes in the philosophy of biology, where his areas of interest include reductionism, heuristics, emergence, modeling, heredity, and cultural evolution. He is a Winton Professor of the Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota and Residential Fellow of the Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science.