Sir Isaiah Berlin (1909-97)

Aha! Sir Isaiah Berlin is the important philosopher who said that there may be more than one right answer to a moral question, as well as who claimed that social science pertains more to the humanities than to the physical sciences. It is absurd to suggest, as the external reviewer did, that Peter Winch was the one who did "pioneering" work in this field. I could just as easily criticised him for failing to make any reference to the landmark work of Isaiah Berlin here, who seems to have performed far more sweeping a job of it. It just goes to show what my supervisor said, that there are so many philosophers and works now that it is simply ludicrous to expect that someone could cover them all. The external reviewer's preoccupation with Winch revealed a parochial bias only, not an objective requirement for something for me to include in my thesis. Winch does not have an entry in almost any of the philosophical dictionaries at which I have looked, including the one that I own. Nor does Wiggins, whom the external reviewer claimed subsequently elaborated on Winch's work. As far as I am concerned, my dictionary is so comprehensive that I can safely ignore any philosopher who does not appear between its covers. In fact, Winch's name does not even appear in the Penguin Dictionary of Sociology, and his best-known work is The Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy. There's no point in wasting any space on him when space is at a premium, and I will focus on Berlin's writings in this regard instead.

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