Title bout

Sat 20 Aug 2011 01:41 AM

While on sabbatical, I wrote a book about natural kinds. It's now been accepted for publication as one of the inaugural volumes of Palgrave's New Directions in the Philosophy of Science series.

I submitted it with the working title Carving up the world. Referees and editors all insist that it also needs a subtitle, something which makes explicit that it's a book about natural kinds. Several possibilities have been suggested.

Some of the suggestions seem unsatisfactory, but my sense of it has gone fuzzy. So I'm just going to list them and ask you, the reader, to either indicate your favorite or suggest an alternative. Keep in mind that the book is about natural kinds, my account is in some ways original but certainly not unprecedented, and most of the words are spent applying the account to examples.

1. Carving up the world: A New Conception of Natural Kinds

2. Carving up the world: An Essay on Natural Kinds

3. Carving up the world: A Study on Natural Kinds

4. Carving up the world: Hmm... uh... Natural Kinds

5. Carving up the world: Pragmatism, Realism, and Natural Kinds

6. Carving up the world: Pragmatism and Realism about Natural Kinds

7. Carving up the world: How science charts natural kinds

[Here's another one added after the first couple of comments.]

8. Carving up the world: Science and Natural Kinds

[And another.]

9. Carving up the world: Scientific Enquiry and Natural Kinds

Comments

from: Matt Brown

Sat 20 Aug 2011 11:13 AM

I like #2, 5, and 6. #7 might be good if there is some kind of nautical or navigational metaphor that you're using in the book.

If you think your editor has a sense of humor, I'd start by suggestion #5.

from: Greg

Sat 20 Aug 2011 12:20 PM

First, congratulations! That's really impressive.

I guess my favorites here would be (in no particular order):

Carving up the world: An Essay on Natural Kinds

Carving up the world: Pragmatism, Realism, and Natural Kinds

Carving up the world: How science charts natural kinds

(though I'm still trying to figure out whether 'charts' is the best verb there...)

Good luck picking the winner!

from: John S. Wilkins

Sat 20 Aug 2011 06:22 PM

I have a volume forthcoming in the same series. I'm calling it The Nature of Classification. It will be the inverse to the natural kinds literature.

First of all I would shorted the main title to "Carving the World", which is more the Phaedrus quote as widely known, and is a little bit mysterious. The subtitle I would give as "Natural Kinds and Science", which is more direct and informative, and will aid searches and indexing.