Unscientific Man Is Beset By A Deplorable

Physical Objects Are Conceptually Imported Into The Situation As Convenient Intermediaries Not By Definition In Terms Of Experience, But Simply As Irreducible Posits Comparable, Epistemologically, To The Gods Of Homer . . . For My Part I Do, Qua Lay Physicist, Believe In Physical Objects And Not In Homer's Gods; And I Consider It A Scientific Error To Believe Otherwise. But In Point Of Epistemological Footing, The Physical Objects And The Gods Differ Only In Degree And Not In Kind. Both Sorts Of Entities Enter Our Conceptions Only As Cultural Posits.

We Cannot Stem Linguistic Change, But We Can Drag Our Feet. If Each Of Us Were To Defy Alexander Pope And Be The Last To Lay The Old Aside, It Might Not Be A Better World, But It Would Be A Lovelier Language.

Our Argument Is Not Flatly Circular, But Something Like It. It Has The Form, Figuratively Speaking, Of A Closed Curve In Space.

The Line That I Am Urging As Today's Conventional Wisdom Is Not A Denial Of Consciousness. It Is Often Called, With More Reason, Arepudiation Of Mind. It Is Indeed A Repudiation Of Mind As A Second Substance, Over And Above Body. It Can Be Described Less Harshly As An Identification Of Mind With Some Of The Faculties, States, And Activities Of The Body. Mental States And Events Are A Special Subclass Of The States And Events Of The Human Or Animal Body.

Wyman's Overpopulated Universe Is In Many Ways Unlovely. It Offends The Aesthetic Sense Of Us Who Have A Taste For Desert Landscapes.