At the beginning of this article I propose to use the word “ evolution “ as it is used in biology, to mean the formation of a number of vegetable or animal species out of a few comparatively simple types, and to exclude from its connotation any idea of perfection, purpose, value, and so on.

In Plutarch’s Quæstiones Conviviales there is a discussion on the topic—π (“What did Plato mean when he used to say that God always geometrizes?”).

Few people, I imagine, would be disconcerted to learn that it is not very easy to provide a philosophical account of their activities; and this holds no less when these activities are of an intellectual nature. Historians and mathematicians and scientists do not wait in that fashion upon the deliberations of philosophers; and a good thing it is for them, too. For their patience might otherwise be rather severely tried, since disagreement and dispute appear to be the life-blood of philosophy. Nonetheless philosophical questions about these and other activities are not irrelevant to practice.

In ‘Scientific Materialism and the Identity Theory’ Malcolm argues that Smart's brain-mind identity theory is not even false, but is unintelligible. I want to comment on his arguments.

‘When the nation's history is poorly taught in schools, ignored by the young, and proudly rejected by qualified elders, awareness of tradition consists only in wanting to destroy it.’ Thus Jacques Barzun, at the age of 93, describing what he sees as decadence.

Karl Popper's aim in Logik der Forschung is to consider the method of investigation used by the empirical sciences. Many people would say that their procedure is marked by the use of induction, and accordingly that the logic of scientific investigation is the logical analysis of induction. But Popper disagrees. Scientific procedure consists of two steps, an hypothesis is formed, and then it is tested. Logic is only concerned with questions of validity, and thus is only concerned with the second of these steps. But every method of testing validity is deductive, and thus the logic of scientific investigation is the study of deduction as used by the empirical sciences.

There has been for some years a feeling in the philosophical world in this country that we have had enough of the unproductive working of the treadmill of linguistics and of the new logic and that Metaphysics is at least not criminal, and even justifiable; notable justifications of Metaphysics are Professor Emmet's The Nature of Metaphysical Thinking and Professor Barnes” The Philosophical Predicament. But what is Metaphysics about? That, it seems to me, is a question which has to be looked into far more carefully than it has been, before we can think of justifying Metaphysics (or, for that matter, of attacking it). “About the Whole” would appear to be the answer which no would-be metaphysician can avoid, however frightened he may be of being sent into a concentration camp by his Ayerian colleagues for giving it. What is this Whole and how is it to be got? Judging at least by most nineteenth-century metaphysics, it would seem that the Whole is some kind of totality (of all that is known or to be known), comparable, save in respect of comprehensiveness, to the totality say which Physics deals with, and that it is got by reflecting on the nature of any knowing (epistemology) and/or on all the branches of knowledge and their relations to each other; Metaphysics, we should conclude, is a synthesis or construct both crowning, and confirmed by, knowledge.

One of the strangest of the many strange habits of philosophers, which mark them out as the Ishmaels of the scientific world, is their refusal to agree as to the precise meaning of the words they use. No philosopher, it seems, is bound by the definitions given by predecessors or contemporaries of even the most central terms: each has to define his terms for himself. The resulting situation certainly lends itself to ridicule and caricature, as in the legend of the theological disputants who arrived after long argument at the conclusion that when the one said ‘God’ he meant what the other meant when he said ‘Devil.’ Still it is probable that this idiosyncrasy of philosophers has some real ground in the special nature of the task on which they are engaged, and is not a mere exhibition of aimless malice or sheer incompetence. Whether that is so or not, one of the consequences of this situation is that the titles of philosophic discourses are apt to be singularly unilluminating: as an indication of the problem to be raised they are, to say the least, highly ambiguous. How the reader may understand the title of this paper I do not know; but the question which I had in mind in choosing it was this.

There can be no doubt that we do know one another. We know that others exist and we know a good deal about others. The question is how we know others. To say that others do not exist would be to assert a solipsism—a theory which no serious philosopher has ever maintained. Solipsism is absurd. Not because it is self-contradictory, for there is nothing self-contradictory in the notion that I alone exist having the experiences and thoughts which I do have and that apart from me nothing and no one else exists. It is absurd simply because others do exist and I know this; because, that is to say, it contradicts the known evidence. This is the sole—but the adequate—ground for concluding solipsism to be absurd. Any discussion of this present problem, therefore, must begin with, the recognition of the fact that knowledge of others occurs.

It has come to be expected that collections issued by the Royal Institute of Philosophy will contain work that has quality or is otherwise interesting. This volume runs true to form and presents plenty of both. It gives the proceedings of the conference arranged by the Institute at Exeter in 1973, consisting of five symposia together with Chairman's remarks of about eight pages or so for each symposium, and in three cases postscripts by the first speaker. The contributors and topics are: R. F. Dearden and Elizabeth Telfer on ‘Autonomy as an Educational Ideal’ with R. M. Hare as Chairman; R. K. Elliott and Glenn Langford on ‘Education and the Development of the Understanding’ with Paul Hirst as Chairman; David Cooper and Timothy O'Hagan on ‘Quality and Equality in Education’ with R. F. Atkinson as Chairman; Mary Warnock and Richard Norman on ‘The Neutral Teacher’ with Alan Montefiore as Chairman; Stuart Brown and A. Phillips Griffiths on ‘Academic Freedom’ with R. S. Peters as Chairman.