"Vagueness provides a copmlete and lucid account of one of the hottest topics in the philosophy of language and the philosophy of logic . . . His effort drives epistemicism to a new level of depth and distinction."

--Roy Sorenson, New York University

"Nothing should henceforth be written on vagueness which fails to learn from this book. It should not be read only for its contribution to vagueness, but also for what it says about knowledge; for the purity of its style. . . and as an example of philosophy at its best."

--Mark R. Sainsbury, British Journal of the Philosophy of Science

Routledge Web Site, May, 2000

Vagueness provides the first comprehensive examination of a topic of increasing importance in metaphysics and the philosophy of logic and language. Timothy Williamson traces the history of this philosophical problem from discussions of the heap paradox in classical Greece to modern formal approaches such as fuzzy logic. He illustrates the problems with views which have taken the position that standard logic and formal semantics do not apply to vague language, and defends the controversial realistic view that vagueness is a kind of ignorance--that there really is a grain of sand whose removal turns a heap into a non-heap, but we cannot know which one it is.