After a Darwinian-type account of what beliefs are and how they arose in animals acting to cope with their environments -"low beliefs," virtually all of which are true - Wallace Matson here shows how the invention of language led to imagination and thence to beliefs formed in other ways ("high
beliefs"), not true though thought to be, which could be consolidated into mythologies, the first Grand Unified Theories of Everything. Science began when Thales of Miletus produced a Grand Theory based on low ("everyday") beliefs. Matson traces the course of science and philosophy through seven
centuries to their sudden and violent displacement by Christianity with its Grand Theory of the old type.
Against the widespread opinion that modern philosophy has slowly but completely emancipated itself from bondage to theology, he shows how remnants from the medieval 'interlude' still
lurk unnoticed in the purportedly neutral notions of logical possibility, possible worlds, and laws as commands, to the detriment of the natural harmony between science and philosophy, including ethics. Accessibly written, this is a book for all who are interested in the foundations of 21st century
thought and who wonder where the cracks might be.
1. Introduction.
Part One: Before Miletus
2. A Brief History of Coping.
3. Language
4. High and Low Beliefs
5. The 'Will to Believe'
6. Eden
7. Babylon
Part Two:Miletus to Alexandria
8. Miletus: the Invention of Science
9. Anaximander and
Anaximenes
10. Science and Philosophy Come to Italy
11. Athens I
12. Atomism
13. Athens II: Plato
14. Athens III: Aristotle
15. Alexandria
16. Beliefs About Believers
Part Three: The Legacy of Christianity
17. Jerusalem Collides with Athens
18.
Cartesianism
19. Miletus Preserved I: Hobbes
20. Institutions
21. Miletus Preserved II: Spinoza
22. The Strange Case of David Hume
23. Ethics Without Edification.
24. L'Envoi
25. Conclusion?
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Wallace Matson is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the co-author of A New History of Philosophy, Vol. I and II.
Making Sense - Margot Northey and Joan McKibbin
Reverence - Paul Woodruff
