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Document Details : Title: De Masfrank files Subtitle: Looking for Mr. Masfrank Author(s): CORTOIS, Paul Journal: Tijdschrift voor Filosofie Volume: 86 Issue: 1 Date: 2024 Pages: 23-54 DOI: 10.2143/TVF.86.1.3293621 Abstract : In this collection of texts, two unknown and strikingly polemical book reviews, published in 1989 by the mysterious ‘Maurits Masfrank’, are presented, republished, and attributed to their true author. In one of them, Ethel Portnoy’s collection of essays Opstandige vrouwen (Revolted Women) (1989) is debunked as a sample of 'superficial literary criticism, superficial psychology, and superficial sociology'. The other one is a review of Gerard Bodifée’s Ruimte voor vrijheid (Room for Freedom) (1988). This was a book-length study in the history and philosophy of science and in the philosophy of nature, which at the same time stood out as an exercise in science communication. The book was a plea for an indeterministic interpretation of contemporary physics in line with Ilya Prigogine’s irreversible thermodynamics. Of the two pseudonymous writings, the review of Bodifée’s work is the philosophically relevant one; it acknowledges the brilliance of the author’s way of communicating scientific results to larger audiences, but ultimately takes the guise of a polemical mini-essay on how not to talk about the philosophical interpretation of science. The Portnoy review, on the other hand, is mainly interesting for tracing authorship, as well as in view of some intriguing relationships with other (philosophical and literary) authors. In the accompanying texts, I reconstruct the context of the creation of the pseudonymous reviews; thus, some lively interactions are recalled between the interdisciplinary seminar group of the then Leuven Centre for Philosophy of Science and, on the other hand, colleagues from more metaphysically minded quarters. |
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