In the days before the Third Programme changed its name and nature to those of Radio 3, there were occasional broadcast discussions by a group called the Epiphany Philosophers. Since 1966 they have been publishing a journal whose title and sub-title point to the large questions with which the group has continued to be concerned: Theoria to Theory: An International Journal of Science, Philosophy and Contemplative Religion. The editors are conscious of the risks but also of the need to take them:‘We are not now seen as so “way out” as we used to be, because more people are realizing that one has got to go “way out”, and that what is “in” is culturally more dated than some powerful forces would have us believe’. The latest issue (June 1981) is also to be the last, though there is hope of continuing the good work in other ways. The journal itself may be revived ‘in a new form as a much cheaper production’ (the current subscription is £30 for a volume of four issues of 88 pages). There is also a plan under which the publishers, Gordon and Breach, will publish a series of books designed to ‘promote the exploration of new ideas and new applications in philosophy and science through continuing co-operation between philosophers and scientists in different disciplines’. Among the halfpromised volumes is one on The Athletics of Old Age, ‘seen as a spiritual as well as a mental and physical matter’. Others are Revisionary Metaphysics and Revisionary Science, What is Wrong with Contemporary Physics? and How can we move beyond Neo-Darwinism in Biology?.

It is necessary that, if the world is divided into nations, conflicts should arise in which there is no strong argument against terrorism or repression. By a strong argument I mean one that would sway all minds not blindly partisan, without moral commitments that are unusual or outlandish in the modern world and with as much aversion to violence as most people have. So I do not here consider, because it is unusual, heroic and absolute pacifism, much as I respect it; on the other hand I do mention Christian moral objections applying specially to terrorism because it seems somewhat outlandish even now to ignore the Christian element in our tradition.

We often, in effect, take it for granted that some word or phrase is what is called ‘the name of a class, be that class empty or non-empty’. We do so whenever in effect we either wonder about, or mean to be taking a view on, the number of members a certain suppositious class has, on the ultrasimple number scale: ‘None, more than none’.

How does the study of society relate to the study of the people it comprises? This longstanding question is partly one of method, but mainly one of fact, of how independent the objects of these two studies, societies and people, are. It is commonly put as a question of reduction, and I shall tackle it in that form: does sociology reduce in principle to individual psychology? I follow custom in calling the claim that it does ‘individualism’ and its denial ‘holism’.

Hegel, in offering his account of Other Minds, claims that his way of conducting the enquiry is the only philosophically significant way. I shall attempt to bring out certain profound insights in this area on Hegel's part, but I shall also argue that his view of Man leaves out of consideration some of the most important aspects of what is essentially human.

Russell said that physics drove him to a position not unlike that of Berkeley —by which he meant subjectivism or solipsism. ‘As regards metaphysics’, he tells us in his Autobiography, ‘when, under the influence of Moore, I first threw off the belief in German idealism, I experienced the delight of believing that the sensible world is real. Bit by bit, chiefly under the influence of physics, this delight has faded, and I have been driven to a position not unlike that of Berkeley, without his God and his Anglican complacency’.

Anthony Kenny concludes The God of the Philosophers by saying that ‘If the argument of the previous chapters has been correct then there is no such being as the God of traditional natural theology … There cannot, if our argument has been sound, be a timeless, immutable, omniscient, omnipotent all-good being’ (p. 121). According to Kenny