The fifth volume of Richard Rorty's "Philosophical papers" published by Cambridge University Press, consists of the works which American philosopher wrote at the very dawn of his career in 1960s and early 1970s. In these essays Rorty addresses issues of transcendental argumentation, the internalism/externalism controversy, mind-body dualism and psychophysical monism, semantic truth, reference and justification. Supplemented by Daniel Dennett's Foreword, the book gives an excellent idea of Rorty's «analytical» writings and his evolution from eliminative materialism to pragmatism.

Two books of American philosopher and science historian Laura Snyder are dedicated to the study of personality and teachings of William Whewell — an outstanding British philosopher and scholar, one of the father figures of the 19th century positivism. The author shows the role of communicative structures formed around prominent philosophers and scientists of the Victorian era, among which Whewell held a special and often the leading position. The purpose of these discussions and conversations, this selected discursive space or a trade zone served not only to find the final scientific truth. Much more they led to legitimating and consolidating the place of scientific and philosophical dispute in the structure of scientific activity and to justifying the latter. In this perspective, Snyder gives the chronicle of scientific-technical revolution of the 19th century, which brought England to the top of the leading world powers.

The review discusses philosophical and interdisciplinary issues of the problem of reality in modern natural sciences as they are represented in the book. It is noted that the authors of the book managed to make some progress in the understanding of this «hard problem» in its philosophical and interdisciplinary contexts.

Review represents a new edition of the Moscow seminar on philosophy of mathematics works. The book deals with two interrelated problems: the problem of “the incomprehensible effectiveness" of mathematics and the problem of the ontological status of mathematical objects. The conditions of applicability of mathematical theories in the natural, social and human sciences. Ideas and themes proposed by the authors of articles have goal to reveal perspective analysis of the subject, which allows detect its previously implicit sides. This approach makes possible to put different questions related to the foundations of mathematics and provide an additional impetus to research in this area.

The new book by Professor David J. Stump explores and develops the theories of the a priori, which are rarely considered in contemporary epistemology and philosophy of science: the theories of pragmatic and functional a priori, proposed in the early XX century by Clarence Irving Lewis and Arthur Pap. The author begins with the analysis of «constitutive elements of science» and Henri Poincare's conventionalism. He consistently and historically examines the approaches towards the theories of the a priori within the philosophy of science in the XX-XXI centuries, and also develops his own original approach to a priori based on the philosophy of science.

This article represents the review of the collective monograph “Social Philosophy of Science. Russian Prospects” (ed. by I. T. Kasavin). The article deals with the crisis in philosophy of science by the end of the XX century which has become prerequisite for the emergence of the project of social philosophy of science. The author analyzes this project and proves the necessity of its implementation in connection with the realities of the global world. The author also analyzes the structure of the book and discusses a number of key issues (attitude of knowledge and sociality, role of science in society, methodological aspects of case-study, etc.).

This is a review of the book “Poiski ponimaniya. Izbrannye trudy po istorii i filosofii nauki” by N. F. Ovchinnikov. The author argues that the main topic of the reviewed book is the problem of knowledge. She pays special attention to the idea of invariance in its connection with the phenomena of scientific revolutions. The author also discusses the relationships between fundamental science and science as social technology.