Epimethean Imaginings: Philosophical and Other Meditations on Everyday Light - Hardcover

Tallis, Raymond

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1138139661 ISBN 13: 9781138139664

Publisher: Routledge, 2016

Synopsis

These essays, written in the spirit of Goethe’s Epimetheus who "traces the quick deed to the dim realm of form-combining possibilities", display the depth and breadth of Tallis’s fascination with our lives. Whether discussing philosophical "hardy perennials" like time, or a mundane artefact like ink, Tallis challenges us to think differently about who we are and why we are.

The first part of the book – Analysis – dives into the deep-end to explore some of the big questions in philosophy: perception, knowledge and belief; time; the relationship between mathematics and reality; and probability and causation. The middle section – Tetchy Interludes – takes a wry look at some aspects of contemporary art; stupidity (including the author’s own); and Christmas. The third part – Celebration – is more experimental in both its subject matter and treatment. It celebrates the complexity of ordinary, everyday consciousness by contemplating the miracle of speech, artefacts that have transformed our lives (and what they reveal about our cognition) such as the wheel, the sail, and ink; and ‘snapshots’ of the author’s own consciousness on an ordinary day, of past consciousness, as captured in historical memory.

Notwithstanding their diversity in theme and style, these essays share the common aim of discovering and celebrating the submerged riches in the "quick deeds" of our everyday lives and perceptions.

About this title

About the Author:

Raymond Tallis trained as a doctor before going on to become Professor of Geriatric Medicine at the University of Manchester, UK. He was elected Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences for his research in clinical neuroscience. He retired from medicine in 2006 to become a full-time writer. He has published fiction, poetry and over a dozen books of cultural criticism and philosophical anthropology including, most recently, Aping Mankind (2011). He has published two other collections of essays with Acumen, In Defence of Wonder (2012) and Reflections of a Metaphysical Flaneur (2013).

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1138139661
• ISBN 13: 9781138139664
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320