100 SOCIAL SCIENTIST profane in our literature, stretching 'our intellectual, spiritual and imaginative horizons to breaking point.* Predictably Eco's Reply centres on Rorty's intervention for it confronts his major claim that the rational and the irrational are not, as Rorty and popular 'post-modernism* would have it, mutually exclusive and exhaustive. Defending the rationality of potentially unlimited interpretation Eco illustrates his point with a carefully chosen example: 'the force of thz Copernican Revolution is not only due to the fact that it explains some astronomical phenomena better than the Ptolemaic tradition but also to the fact that it—instead of representing Ptolemy as a crazy liar—explains why and on what grounds he was justified in outlining his own interpretation'. Eco questions Rorty's disdain for the theoretical component of the very creativity he otherwise extolls. Why should utility per se be more respectable than the enquiry that makes it possible? The need to know itself validates the 'marvelling', the 'curiosity' that generates knowledge. In an environment when everything is an 'acquisition*, the easier the better, one has tremendous sympathy for Eco's position. MADHU PRASAD