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 Published by William S. Bretzlaff, 238 pages                                                                                                            Contact the publisher at wsb@bretzlaff.com

     The author, Robert S. Bretzlaff, Ph.D., comments on the origin of An Initial View of Final Causes as follows:

     The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign was literally on my horizon while I attended Unity High School in Tolono, Illinois, because the tip of the University’s basketball facility (then called the Assembly Hall) was visible from the high school.

     Upon first enrolling at the University of Illinois one month before the first moonwalk, I found that I could complete my technical assignments with time left over to wander through the philosophy section of the new Undergraduate Library (built entirely underground so as not to interfere with the sunlight required by the historic agricultural experiment plots known as the Morrow Plots).  Ultimately, I earned undergraduate degrees in physics and in philosophy, as well as a Ph.D. in engineering, from the University of Illinois.  I pursued a technical career, but I never stopped reading philosophy, and especially the history of philosophy.

     Now, having recently retired from a technical career in materials science and in statistics, I have taken up writing based on my multiple degrees in philosophy and physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and from the University of California at Berkeley.  My first paperback book, An Initial View of Final Causes, examines the philosophical foundations of the concept of final cause as developed by Aristotle, Kant and Hegel and as incorporated, at least implicitly, into some aspects of contemporary science.   An Initial View of Final Causes is now available as an e-book.