'A PLEA FOR MAN'
SIR,—The reviewer of my Plea for Man states: 'Even [Rossi's] specific criticism is wrong: the attempt to explain manifold appearances in terms of a single factor, such as water, was abandoned—tacitly by Anaximenes and explicitly by Empedocles, Anaxagoras and the Atomists.'
I wrote quite clearly in my Plea: '. . . they thought [the problem of being] could be solved by singling out one of four primeval kinds of
matter' (page 48). Anaximander's and Anaximenes's position is dealt with on pages 46 and 47. The reference on page 47 clearly includes Anaxagoras and the Atomists. This is the only point on which the reviewer condescends to give reasons for his dislike of my book. Whilst I can understand very well his indignation at finding so many of the pet superstitions of our age challenged, this does not justify his attempt at substantiating his opinion by misquoting my statements.—Yours faithfully,
MARIO M. ROSSI
Edinburgh University Press, George Square, Edinburgh 8
[J. W. N. Watkins writes: 'I suspect that I misread the sentence Signor Rossi now quotes because it not only contradicts sentences preceding it and immediately following it, but completely undermines his accusation against the pre-Socratics. On -page 46 Signor Ross,! scolded "Thales and his immediate successors for ignoring "the problem whether the redue' tion of the manifold phenomena to a single underlying matter was a valid explanation." On page 47 he wrote: "Early Greek philosophers never came to grips with the downright con- tradiction involved in the assumption of a single principle or matter as the origin or 'root' of many different objects," The sea- tence he now quotes is immediately followed by : "The only problem which they reallY considered was that of the transformation froth one kind of matter to another, or the relations between the 'one' matter and its 'many' forms. True, Signoi Rossi "dealt with" Anaximenes and Anaximander—but without indicating that they abandoned the monism to which be objects. My penultimate paragraph gave what I consider strong reasons why anyone who can still respect human achievement should dislike Signor Rossi's book.'—Editor, Spectator.] CYPRUS
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