Abstract

© The Authors [2017]. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected] Grosholz is interested in the growth of knowledge: what happens when reasoning not only orders what we already know, but adds to what we know? In her previous works, especially in her [2007], Grosholz insisted on the fact that working scientists and mathematicians, when they add to what we know, often combine different ‘modes of representation’, taking advantage of the ambiguity that arises when features of one sort of discourse are grafted onto another. In her new book she goes on along the same path but brings an important addition to the pattern: ‘ampliative’ thinking takes place ‘when discourse whose main intent is to establish and clarify reference is yoked with discourse whose main intent is analysis’. According to Grosholz, the basis of productive thinking is the difference between...