This treatise on the question of knowledge challenges readers to re-examine the protective barriers built to isolate science from other forms of enquiry, and each particular science from its neighbours. The author argues that philosophy itself must stop being treated as an obscure speciality, and take up its role as the key to understanding. The text will be of interest to those concerned with the plight of education and institutionalized knowledge, and the fate of learning in the future.

In The Ethical Primate, Mary Midgley, 'one of the sharpest critical pens in the West' according to the Times Literary Supplement, addresses the fundamental question of human freedom.
Scientists and philosophers have found it difficult to understand how each human-being can be a living part of the natural world and still be free. Midgley explores their responses to this seeming paradox and argues that our evolutionary origin explains both why and how human freedom and morality have come about.

Midgley notes how science has developed high spiritual ambitions. From prophetic physicists have come speculations that go beyond the claims of any religion.

In The Ethical Primate, Mary Midgley, 'one of the sharpest critical pens in the West' according to the Times Literary Supplement, addresses the fundamental question of human freedom.
Scientists and philosophers have found it difficult to understand how each human-being can be a living part of the natural world and still be free. Midgley explores their responses to this seeming paradox and argues that our evolutionary origin explains both why and how human freedom and morality have come about.

Why do the big philosophical questions so often strike us as far-fetched and little to with everyday life? Mary Midgley shows that it need not be that way; she shows that there is a need for philosophy in the real world. Her popularity as one of our foremost philosophers is based on a no-nonsense, down-to-earth approach to fundamental human problems, philosphical or otherwise. In Utopias, Dolphins and Computers she makes her case for philosophy as a difficult but necessary tool for solving some of the most pressing issues facing contemporary society.
How should we treat animals?...

This work is an investigation of why and how science has so powerfully shaped the way we understand ourselves, our behaviour towards others and our place in the world. Moral philosopher Mary Midgely shows how the roots of the problem lie in the fragmented, atom-like picture of ourselves we inherited from the 17th century. Breaking the world up into small parts and observing them in isolation may work in science, but she clearly spells out how this kind of approach can be disastrous when turned towards understanding ourselves, our interaction with the environment and our interaction with other...

To look into the darkness of the human soul is a frightening venture. Here Mary Midgley does so, with her customary brilliance and clarity. In Wickedness she sets out to delineate not so much the nature of wickedness as its actual sources. Midgley's analysis proves that the capacity for real wickedness is an inevitable part of human nature. This is not however a blanket acceptance of evil. She provides us with a framework that accepts its existence yet offers humankind the possibility of rejecting this part of our nature. Out of this dark journey she returns with an offering...

Midgley exposes the illogical logic of poor doctrines that shelter themselves behind the prestige of science. Always at home when taking on the high priests of evolutionary theory - Dawkins, Wilson and their acolytes - she has described evolution as the creation-myth of our age. In Evolution As A Religion she examines how science comes to be used as a substitute for religion and points out how badly that role distorts it. Her argument is insightful - a lively indictment of these misuses of science.

Philosophers have traditionally concentrated on the qualities that make human beings different from other species. In Beast and Man Mary Midgley stresses continuities. What makes people tick? Largely, she asserts, the same things as animals. She tells us humans are rather more like other animals than we previously allowed ourselves to believe, and reminds us just how primitive we are in comparison to the sophistication of many animals.

One of the UK's foremost moral philosophers, Mary Midgley recounts her remarkable story in this elegiac and moving account of friendships found and lost, bitter philosophical battles and of a profound love of teaching.

In spite of her many books and public profile, little is known about Mary's life. Part of a famous generation of women philosophers that includes Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Warnock and Iris Murdoch, Midgley tells us in vivid and humorous fashion how they cut a swathe through the arid landscape of 1950s British Philosophy, writing and arguing about the...