title: Relational "(e)pistemologies" (Counterpoints)
author:  Barbara J. Thayer-Bacon 
description: Barbara J. Thayer-Bacon has written a book in a rare genre; it is both a textbook by its scope and thoroughness, and a work of original scholarship by the level of theoretical contribution. Both teachers and scholars interested in theory of knowledge and feminist theory will find it informative, provocative, and accessible. The author easily mixes heavy theoretical discussion with personal anecdotes and observations. Thayer-Bacon invites us to an intellectual adventure in search of the building blocks for the emerging relational view of the universe. We visit traditional Western epistemologists and their feminist, pragmatist and postmodernist critics. The author tackles the big scary R word (relativism), and travels through multiple forms and layers of human relations. She is not afraid to enter territories many would consider too far from mainstream philosophy; along the way we meet God, Native American spirits, Buddha and some very unorthodox scientists. This is a courageous attempt to save epistemology from itself by bringing the notion of relation into the center of attention. (Alexander Sidorkin, Bowling Green State University)
zlib_text: **Table of Contents**
  
    *  _Part II: EGB_
    *  _Introduction:_
    *  _A Musico-Logical Offering_
    *  _Three-Part Invention_
    *  _Formal Systems_
    *  _Theorems, Axioms, Rules_
    *  _Inside and Outside the System_
    *  _Jumping out of the System_
    *  _M-Mode, I-Mode, U-Mode_
    *  _Decision Procedures_
    *  _or,_
    *  _What the Tortoise Said to Achilles_
    *  _by Lewis Carroll'_
    *  _The pq-System_
    *  _The Decision Procedure_
    *  _Bottom-up vs. Top-down_
    *  _Isomorphisms Induce Meaning_
    *  _Meaningless and Meaningful Interpretations_
    *  _Active vs. Passive Meanings_
    *  _Double-Entendre!_
    *  _Formal Systems and Reality_
    *  _Mathematics and Symbol Manipulation_
    *  _The Basic Laws of Arithmetic_
    *  _/ // // // / /_
    *  _Ideal Numbers_
    *  _Euclid's Proof_
    *  _Getting Around Infinity_
    *  _The telephone rings; Achilles picks it up._
    *  _Primes vs. Composites_
    *  _The tq-System_
    *  _Capturing Compositeness_
    *  _Illegally Characterizing Primes_
    *  _Figure 