Nine

Foulkstown, Ballinure, Thurles, Co. Tipperary, Eire

7 March 95

Dear Tom

I haven’t heard from you for a bit and hope that the large claims I want to make on behalf of The structure didn’t make you too nervous about ‘the project’ you were at one time worried that I was trying to recruit you to.
Anyway, here’s the stuff I told you I was working on about the Seventeenth Century inversion and the myriad false trails it sent us philosophers on. It tries to give some sense of the sources of the modern attempts to write history out of the scenario and some hints as to how a return to Aristotelian conceptions (as I conceive them) may help to write history back in.
There are some sketchy hints at the end about ‘natural kinds’ and why I, in my turn, am nervous (maybe without cause) about the use of developmental psychology in giving an account of them. As you will see, my own approach would be to see them as a variable matter between cultures and times, varying with the projects, practices and interests that characterise the ‘way of life’ of different times and cultures.
I’m sure you will find it interesting but hope that you will not find it as annoying and anathematic as I am equally sure a lot of people will.



All the best to Jehane
and yourself,

Yours,
Guy