Nicholas Rescher is University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, USA. He has served as President of the American Philosophical Association, the American Catholic Philosophy Association, the American G.W. Leibniz Society, the C.S. Peirce Society and the American Metaphysical Society. Author of over 100 books ranging across many areas of philosophy, he was awarded the Alexander von Humboldt prize for Humanistic Scholarship in 1984, the Belgian Prix Mercier in 2005, and the Aquinas Medal of the American Catholic Philosophical Association in 2007.