On the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Boston Studies series in 1985, Cohen, Elkana, and Wartofsky wrote in another preface such as this that the time had come for establishing institutions supporting a vision to which the series had been devoted since its inception, namely that of a more broadly conceived, interdisciplinary study of the history and philosophy of science: In recent years it has become evident that, in addition to serious and competent disciplinary work on the specifics of the History of Science, the Philosophy of Science and the Sociology of Science, there is now a growing need to develop a problem oriented approach which no longer distinguishes between these three specialties in a cut and dried way. Since the time has come for such an approach, the institutional tools should be provided. A way to do so would be . . . to organize colloquia and to publish good papers stemming from these, without attempting to organize the papers under the separate rubrics of History of Philosophy or Sociology of Science; and moreover to consider it natural that any fundamental issue of the foundations of the sciences, or their place in a culture and the way they are institutionalized in the societal web, is still our concern, no matter whether we are a professional scientist, historian or philosopher who deals with the problem (p. vii).

Taking as a starting point the embeddedness of all disciplinary and interdisciplinary inquiry - since interdisciplinarity is itself not a unitary phenomenon but encompasses many different knowledge practices embedded in widely differing political, economic and ideological constituencies - the essays in this volume explore in different ways some of the conversations currently taking place across disciplinary boundaries in the exciting new field of literature and science. Like literature, science is seen as a site of competing ideological constructions, as a complex (and richly ambiguous) element of modern (and postmodern) social discourse, circulating in a wider cultural community where its currency fluctuates according to complex changes in social and epistemic conditions, including the relative prestige or cultural capital of 'science' (or 'literature') within professional and disciplinary hierarchies at any given time.

The Neuroscientific Turnbrings together 19 scholars from a variety of fields to reflect on the promises of and challenges facing emergent "neurodisciplines" such as neuroethics, neuroeconomics, and neurohistory. In the aftermath of the Decade of the Brain, neuroscience has become one of the hottest topics of study---not only for scientists but also, increasingly, for scholars from the humanities and social sciences. While the popular press has simultaneously lauded and loathed the coming "neurorevolution," the academy has yet to voice any collective speculations about whether there is any coherence to this neuroscientific turn; what this turn will and should produce; and what implications it has for inter- or transdisciplinary inquiry. Melissa M. Littlefield and Jenell M. Johnson provide an initial framework for this most recent of "turns" by bringing together 14 original essays by scholars from the humanities, social sciences, and neurosciences. The resulting collection will appeal to neuroscientists curious about their colleagues' interest in their work; scholars and students both in established neurodisciplines and in disciplines such as sociology or English wondering about how to apply neuroscience findings to their home disciplines; and to science, technology, and society scholars and students interested in the roles of interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity in the construction of knowledge.

Today's student of literature is faced with an overwhelming variety of critical approaches. The need to evaluate their usefulness in furthering our understanding of literature is therefore a growing concern. In Literary Meaning, Wendell V. Harris explores the fallacies behind the fashionable hermeticism that insists that the meaning of a text is indeterminate and divides language from any reality beyond itself. Harris then puts forward a powerful case for the return to hermeneutics, in which an understanding of the author's intended meaning is the first step in reading, and at the same time insists upon the hollowness of the current mode of professionalism in literature departments. Set to provoke fierce debate, this controversial book will become essential reading for all those involved in literary criticism.