The Snarling Logician presents the reflections of a free-thinker. It explains in what sense free-thinking is free, and also the sense in which it is not. Free-thinking, the author argues, essentially involves a commitment to follow the evidence wherever it leads, and to accept the conclusions of rational inquiry, even if those conclusions initially displease us. The book contains three essays. The first explores the nature of the philosophic quest. It emphasizes the difficulty of doing philosophy, and the even greater difficulty of writing about it in plain language. The second essay...