Frank Ramsey: A Sheer Excess of Powers

by Cheryl Misak

Overview

When he died in 1930 aged 26, Frank Ramsey had already invented one branch of mathematics and two branches of economics, laying the foundations for decision theory and game theory. Keynes deferred to him; he was the only philosopher whom Wittgenstein treated as an equal. Had he lived he might have been recognized as the most brilliant thinker of the century. This amiable shambling bear of a man was an ardent socialist, a believer in free love, and an intimate of the Bloomsbury set. For the first time Cheryl Misak tells the full story of his extraordinary life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780191074820
Publisher:	OUP Oxford
Publication date:	02/13/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	480
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Cheryl Misak is University Professor and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto. She works on American pragmatism, the history of analytic philosophy, ethics and political philosophy, and the philosophy of medicine. Her most recent books include Frank Ramsey: A Sheer Excess of Powers (forthcoming 2020), Cambridge Pragmatism: From Peirce and James to Ramsey and Wittgenstein, The American Pragmatists, Truth and the End of Inquiry: A Peircean Account of Truth, Truth, Politics, Morality: Pragmatism and Deliberation. She has had visiting fellowships or positions at the Goethe University in Frankfurt, the Free University in Berlin, Trinity College Cambridge, St. Johns College Cambridge, and New York University. In 2013, she completed a long run in academic administration at the University of Toronto, culminating as Vice-President and Provost.

Table of Contents

Foreword: 'Mind and Heart'
Part I: Boyhood
1. The Ramseys
2. Winchester Nearly Unmade Him
3. 'We really live in a great time for thinking'
Part II: The Cambridge Man
4. Undergraduate Life
5. 'To my generation, he was rather frightening'
6. Ramsey and the Early Wittgenstein
7. Vienna Interlude
8. 'The fundamentals are so philosophical'
9. The New Don
10. Passion Found
Part III: An Astonishing Half Decade
11. Settling Down in Work and Life
12. Revolution in Philosophy
13. Two Crises
14. Cambridge Economics
15. Ramseyan Economics: The Feasible First Best
16. 1928 Return to Mathematics
17. Wittgenstein Comes Home
18. 'The problem of philosophy must be divided if I am to solve it'
19. The End and Meaning of a Life

Editorial Reviews

"This book is dedicated to the memory of Ramsey in a solemn and comprehensively devoted manner. The author has tried to satisfy all the parties interested in Ramsey for one reason or another...The result is an introduction to his work, as well as an account of his life." — Michael Otte, MathSciNet

"Frank Ramsey: A Sheer Excess of Powers is a very well researched biography, thus is of great value to academic students and professional scholars alike. The book is a joy to read for not only economists but also mathematicians and philosophers too." — Jason Wakefield, Avello Publishing Journal

"I read the book over three long nights of lockdown, in the middle of an Australian winter. I'd expected to find it fascinating, but not to find it so gripping... she [Misak] takes us so successfully into Ramsey's world, and we know how it ends... [she] pitches things just right. She takes us into Ramsey's personal world, without over-dramatising it." — Huw Price, Society

"...a brilliant, evocative biography of Ramsey." — Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Open

From the Publisher