Title bout, round two

Fri 16 Dec 2011 07:34 AM

My book on natural kinds is in the hands of the publisher. It was to have been titled Carving up the world: Scientific enquiry and natural kinds, but yesterday I learned about a just-published collection of essays titled Carving nature at its joints: Natural kinds in metaphysics and science.

The collection from MIT Press includes a wide range of essays from the 11th Inland Northwest Philosophy Conference, so it really isn't direct competition for my focused monograph on natural kinds. Yet the title, as my publisher says, is "a little close for comfort."

In short, I need a new title.

Brainstorming this morning led to the following list, plus others too terrible to record. Do any of these sound like books you would want to read?

1. [strike]The philosophy of[/strike] Planets, mallards, and other natural kinds

2. Natural kinds and the structure of the world

3. Pragmatism, realism, and natural kinds

4. What about natural kinds?

5. Science, philosophy, and natural kinds

Comments

from: Greg

Fri 16 Dec 2011 06:27 PM

I Will Cut You at the Joints, Nature

Actually, I think your old title is sufficiently different from the INPC volume's, and I like it better than 1-5 above. I would maybe consider pressing your publisher to stay the course with your previous title.

from: Marshall

Wed 28 Dec 2011 12:14 PM

Greg's is great.

You could also reverse the title/subtitle strategy, and go with something like "Scientific enquiry and natural kinds: Planets, mallards, and <add additional interesting kind term>s". That means that only the less intriguing title gets into short title listings, but that's also the more informative part.