Steps forward

✍ Scribed by Robert Ginsberg

• Book ID: 104637780
• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 1992
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 229 KB
• Volume: 26
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0022-5363
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00138964

✦ Synopsis

Editorial

Steps forward ROBERT GINSBERG, Executive Editor With this volume in 1992, The Journal of Value Inquiry expands to 600 pages. The four numbers of 150 pages each in Volume 26 constitute an increase of 50 percent over the size of the Journal in 1991, whose four numbers of 100 pages each added up to 400 pages. Volume 25 in 1991 itself represented an increase of 20 percent over the 336-page annual publication that was the Journal's budget of space in the 1980s. We have come a long way in the twenty-five years since James Wilbur brought out Volume 1 in 1967, offering 278 pages to the readers of this new Journal.

The growth of the Journal corresponds to the growth of interest and activity in value inquiry. What had once been thought of as a late-blooming specialized branch of philosophy under the name of "axiology" or "value theory," value inquiry has come to be seen as fundamental to all the traditional branches of philosophy, including logic, theory of knowledge, and metaphysics, as well as significant for many other fields, including the arts, education, religion, and medical practice. While each field may be said to have its values -and its value for human life, value inquiry can fill the gap between specialties anti study their several contributions to a more valuable human life. Value inquiry may well be the leading edge of philosophical thinking throughout the world. The quantity -and qualityof contributions indeed merits the expansion of the one philosophical journal in the world devoted to value inquiry.

With expansion we are all the better prepared to serve our contributors in the timely and efficient publication of their work. All academic publishing takes longer than is hoped for. Editors and referees need to reach their judgments without excessive pressure of time. Consultation takes place not only in time but across space: the dispatch of materials to many parts of the world is subject to obstacles in communication. Scholars often travel, especially during summer months; our editors and referees, as well as many of our authors, are wandering scholars. Yet those who entrust their work to us require that we deal expeditiously with their contributions, for these are