The Price of Wisdom

Today it occurred to me that I might soon wish to read The Structure of Appearance by Nelson Goodman, a fairly well known and well thought of work in the Anglo-Austrian-American tradition of analytic philosophy. Strand Books did not offer a copy. Powell's did, but at $363, a price I really don't understand.  Comparable works that quote Goodman go for perhaps $40 new. I mentioned this to a friend, who said that he had seen a book of Jaako Hintikka's on Amazon for over $1000.

In 2011, there was the curious case of The Making of a Fly, a work of developmental biology that dueling pricing bots bid up to the price of $23.7 million for a copy. Eventually someone noticed, and the price dropped to $135. The bots belonged to a couple of sellers on Amazon. I suppose something like that could have happened with Hintikka's book.

But as far as I know, Powell's sells only its own stock. My friend supposes that the Goodman book--printed long ago--could have come in as part of an odd lot, and that a Powell's employee might have gone to Amazon to see what it ought to cost. That makes as much sense as any conjecture I can come up with.