In Defence of Wonder and Other Philosophical Reflections

Brings together Tallis's most popular essays and journalism from the past decade, revised for publication in book form.

Acknowledgments; Overture; Chapter 1 George Moore's Hands: Scepticism about Philosophy; Chapter 2 Zhuangzi and that Bloody Butterfly; Chapter 3 Rescuing Truth; Chapter 4 Just a Little Tune I Found in My Mouth; Chapter 5 A Smile at Waterloo Station: On the True Mystery of Memory; Chapter 6 The Myth of Time Travel; Chapter 7 Time, Tense and Physics: The Theory of Everything but ...; Chapter 8 Seeing Time; Chapter 9 Call No Event Future Until it is Past; Chapter 10 On (Almost) Nothing: Concerning Spatial Points; Chapter 11 An Introduction to Incontinental Philosophy; Chapter 12 Biological Reasons for Being Cheerful?; Chapter 13 The Soup and the Scaffolding; Chapter 14 Don't Tell Him, Pike!; Chapter 15 Okey Doke; Chapter 16 The Professor of Data-Lean Generalizations; Chapter 17 "I Kid You Not": Knowingness and Other Shallows; Chapter 18 My Bald Head: The Ethics of Hair-Splitting; Chapter 19 Getting Consciousness to Speak Itself: The Great Unmet Challenge of Realistic Fiction; Chapter 20 Reader, I Sh***ed Him: Reflections on the Decline of the Asterisk; Chapter 21 Ian McEwan's Saturday: Does Implausibility Matter?; Chapter 22 Literature, Philosophy and Medicine: On Anton Chekhov's "Ward No. 6"; Chapter 23 The Mystery and the Paradox of Scientific Medicine; Chapter 24 Enhancing Humanity; Chapter 25 On Not Choosing the Alternative: Reflections on Living Longer; Chapter 26 Making Use of Death; Chapter 27 Why I am an Atheist; Coda;