Talk:David Stove

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Contents

[edit] Comments

206.173.47.7 23:59, 27 July 2007 (UTC) It would be very helpful if the article presented appropriate criticism of Stove's position.

I also dispute the point of view of this article. I ran by Stove's views in The Rationlaity of Induction by those interested in such matters. It is a terrible argument. He is "confused indeed" said one. David Stove simply is not a good philospher.

I'd like to see a little more arguments, gentlemen. Here ...

I DISPUTE THE POINT OF VIEW OF THIS ARTICLE FOR SCOTT CAMPBELL IS A FOLLOWER OF DAVID STOVE AND THE BIAS STILL SHOWS : "witty attacks...etc"

... and here. --84.146.40.95 01:36, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Some reply to the comments above is in order.
1. Yes, links to critics are noted on the talk page below, and will be added to the article in due course.
2. I wonder if the anonymous editor's anonymous friends consistitute a peer-review better than Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which cites Stove in five topics. Forgive me if I doubt that "those interested" had five cites between them.
Cheers. Alastair Haines (talk) 12:19, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Recent edits

In recently going through and trying to clean up the POV of the older entry, I believe there are several statements, which seem to be the original author's interpretations and not Stove's. For example:

"What he calls the 'Cave Men' theory - a view that T. H. Huxley often resorted to - says that while the "Darwinian struggle" no longer occurs in extant human populations it did so amongst cave-men"

If the statement about Huxley is not part of Stove's argument then it should, it seems to me, have some citation to document that it is correctly attributed to Huxley.

I did not add a section of criticisms of Stove's view, but I agree with the comments at the top of this page that this entry should have such a section, as do most other entries about philosophers.--Calamus 2355 EDT, 31 July 2006

[edit] Death

This article implies Stove died of cancer. However I have been told by a reliable source that his death was due to suicide. Does anyone know the full story? -- FP 02:41, Apr 17, 2005 (UTC)

I've got the full story and added to the article. -- FP 03:02, Apr 17, 2005 (UTC)

The addition contained one error, which I (who am David Stove's son) have taken the liberty of correcting. My mother did not predecease Dad; although she had a massive stroke less than a year before Dad's death, she actually survived him by seven years. -- User:Respighi (a.k.a. R. J. Stove), 14:06, May 6, 2006

[edit] NPOV?

Could this entry possibly be any more starry-eyed and adoring?

  • "...easily the wittiest philosopher of all time..."
  • "...witty and devastating..."
  • "...a semi-mythical status in philosophy of science circles..."
  • "...Stove mercilessly and hilariously exposed the methods by which Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos and Feyeraband managed to make their philosophies seem respectable..."
  • "...What made Stove a great thinker..."
  • "...brilliantly original argument..."

I mean come on. Can comeone clean this drool up so it's a little more in line with the NPOV policy?

I've edited the text to make it more netural. The anonymous commentator above might like to read it again.
Scott Campbell.
There's no doubt that Stove could be hilarious. The first part of "Four Modern Irrationalists" is a complete hoot. It reminds me a bit of the monologues of Australian comedian Paul Hogan. I actually disagree with Stove about almost everything, but I've never read anything by him that is not instantly engaging, whether delightful or infuriating.
I don't know anything about David Stove except what I read in this wikipedia article., but if this is what the "more neutral" version of the article looks like I'd be terrified to see what the previous version was like. It's obviously a good thing for the article to present Mr. Stove's views, at the article as it stands is laudibly comprehensive in that respect. But this is wikipedia, so it needs to be written as [i]descriptions[/i] of Mr. Stove's views, whereas this is just relentless advocacy for Mr. Stove's views. --awk
Perhaps you would like to actually provide some examples of "relentless advocacy" in this article if you are going to make such a claim?
Dextux 12:24, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
In this particular article, I must admit I resent the NPOV requirement, I'm sad to see all those true and verifiable comments about David Stove consigned to the talk page archives. C'est la vie — Ned Kelly. Alastair Haines (talk) 11:37, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The reason why no sufficient critcisms have yet been added?

Perhaps because Stove is so irrelevant to the global philosophical community that nobody bothers. Those who know of him know he is a crackpot and that he is himself a prime example of his enfant-terriblism. Just a thought.

I'm not sure if I agree with the statement that Stove is "irrelevant" or a "crackpot". Look around the internet and you'll find a number of very well educated individuals who have high respect for his philosophical views.
LoL, I'm not sure many have managed to come up with criticisms of Stove that cut the mustard in the guild. Several of his friends disagree with him on various issues, both serious analytical issues, and undoubtedly many social issues. However, the thing people seem to most appreciate about him is his ability to "clip the wings" or "burst the bubble" of philosophical excesses. Common sense realism was not what I signed up for when taking philosophy, but they gave me Stove and I got it in spades. I still remember him patiently answering my stupid questions brilliantly, charmingly and entertainingly. He was a real gentleman. How slow I was to learn. Alastair Haines (talk) 11:29, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 03:55, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Critical reviews

  • Scott Campbell, 'Defending Common Sense', review of David Stove, Against the Idols of the Age, in Partisan Review 67 (2000).
  • "[The Plato Cult] captures and records many of [Stove's] best comments, weaving them together into a caustic critique of what regularly passes for academic philosophy." — Andrew D. Irvine, Review of David Stove, The Plato Cult', in Canadian Philosophical Reviews 14 (1994): 59–63.
  • "A none-too-gentle shaking does us good, once it was Moore who did the job. Nowadays it is above all Stove, and he does it with devastating wit. Naked emperors beware." — David Lewis
  • "Stove’s essays are elegant, insightful, beautifully crafted and enormously interesting. They are also outrageous, opinionated, occasionally unfair and almost always side-splittingly funny … He says things that need to be said and that others lack the courage — or foolhardiness — to say." — Stephen Stich of Rutgers University
  • "[Reading Stove] is like watching Fred Astaire dance. You don’t wish you were Fred Astaire; you are just glad to have been around to see him in action." — Michael Levin of the City University of New York
  • "As so often and so unfairly happens in intellectual history, [Stove's] reputation has grown considerably since his death. Long before this, though, he had a small circle of admirers, most of whom were academic philosophers, who appreciated not only his intellectual brilliance and the polish of his unadorned prose, but how very funny he invariably was." — Keith Windschuttle

Alastair Haines (talk • contribs) 10:44, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Stove's 'Jazz Age' is reprinted in Anthony O'Hear, Karl Popper: Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers, Routledge, 2004.
I feel I'm going to have to write up a summary of Popper and After at some stage.
I still hear people trumpeting falsifiability as the gold standard, not only of scientific theory, but of personal enterprise in various ways. They're not interested in listening to any other view, of course. If challenged, a smug smile, a straightening of the back, a spring in the step, a warm glow suffuses them. "Ah! Another poor soul who can't get past the counter-intuitive nature of falsificationism," they think. I should "go away and think about it" or "read Kuhn" they suggest.
Oh really!
Stove was one of many working to educate my generation, as well as his own. They were outnumbered, the results show in a number of places in our society today. Alastair Haines (talk) 15:49, 25 April 2008 (UTC)


OK, I'm doing a web-trawl for a bibliography.

"There are already signs of the rehabilitation of classical and logical probability, and in particular the principle of indifference and the principle of maximum entropy, by authors such as Stove (1986), Bartha and Johns (2001), Festa (1993), Paris and Vencovská (1997), and Maher (2000, 2001)."

—Hajek, Alan. 'Probability: Interpretations of'. In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2002.
[Notice something here, 1993 (Festa) minus 1986 (Stove) = 7 years, Hajek places Stove 10 years ahead of the rest!]

Stove is cited five (5) times in the online version of the Stanford Encyclopedia, in the articles:

  • 'Interpretations of Probability'
  • 'Karl Popper'
  • 'Miracles'
  • 'Pragmatic Arguments for Belief in God'
  • 'Russell's Moral Philosophy'

He is actually cited twice more ... in the titles of works by other philosophers! (Critics though they are.)

  • Brecher, Bob. 'Why Patronize Feminists? A reply to Stove on Mill.' Philosophy 68 (1993): 397-400.
  • Brown, DG. 'Stove's Reading of Mill'. Utilitas: A Journal of Utilitarian Studies 10 (1998): 122-126.

That's a start. There's a lot of cites for DC Stove. Interestingly, there tends to be an emotional element in most of them — respectful and appreciative of ideas and humour on one side, somewhat scathing on the other. That suggests to me "A hit! A hit! A very palpable hit!" Alastair Haines (talk) 10:36, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] I am going to be bold

Citations requested for references to David Stove's passing have not been provided. Unless this is considered worthy of publication in reliable sources, Wiki has no precedent to consider it appropriate, notable or relevant. A source that reported this would presumably also provide sufficient context for an adequate appreciation of any significant and relevant circumstances. In any case, since the text has been challenged, and no published citation provided, over the course of more than a year, I am removing the text. Alastair Haines (talk) 06:08, 11 May 2008 (UTC)