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Why do giraffes have long necks? It can't really be for reaching tasty leaves since their main food is ground level bushes, tidy though that explanation would be. And how does relativity theory cope with the fact that the observable universe defies prediction by being far too small and anything but homogeneous? By inventing a vastly larger, but invisible, universe. And what exactly should we make of the scientists who claim to be witnessing thought itself, when the changes of blood flow in the brain that they observe are a thousand times slower than the neuronal activity it is supposed to reveal? A little scepticism is in order. Yet if philosophers of science, from Thomas Kuhn to Paul Feyerabend, have argued that science is a more haphazard process, driven by political fashion and short-term economic self-interest, today almost everyone seems to assume it is a vast jigsaw of interlocking facts pieced slowly but steadily together by expert practitioners. In this witty but profound 21st-century update on the issues, Martin Cohen offers vital clues for understanding not only the way knowledge develops, but also into the dangers of accepting too readily or too uncritically the claims of experts of all kinds - even philosophical ones! The claims are invariably presented as objective fact, yet are rooted in human subjectivity.

Today, there are over one hundred nuclear reactors operating in our backyards, from Indian Point in New York to Diablo Canyon in California. Proponents claim that nuclear power is the only viable alternative to fossil fuels, and due to rising energy consumption and the looming threat of global warming, they are pushing for an even greater investment. Here, energy economist Andrew McKillop and social scientist Martin Cohen argue that the nuclear power dream being sold to us is pure fantasy. Debunking the multilayered myth that nuclear energy is cheap, clean, and safe, they demonstrate how landscapes are ravaged in search of the elusive yellowcake to fuel the reactors, and how energy companies and politicians rarely discuss the true costs of nuclear power plants--from the subsidies that build the infrastructure to the unspoken guarantee that the public will pick up the cleanup cost in the event of a meltdown, which can easily top $100 billion dollars.

The tales -- The ancients -- Socrates the sorcerer (469 BCE) -- The different forms of Plato (circa 427-347 BCE) -- Aristotle the aristocrat (384 -- circa 322 BCE) -- More ancients -- Lao Tzu changes into nothing (sixth to fifth century BCE) -- Heraclitus : the dark side of the river (c. fifth century BCE) -- Pythagoras counts up to ten (c. 570-495 BCE) -- Hypatia, holds up half of the sky (circa 70-415 CE) -- Medieval philosophy -- Augustine the Hippocrite (354 -- 430 C.E.) -- Thomas Aquinas disputes the existence of God (1225-74) -- Modern philosophy -- Descartes the dilettante and more Descartes (1596-1650) -- Hobbes squares the circle (1588-1679) -- Spinoza grinds himself away ... (1632-1677) -- Enlightened philosophy -- John Locke invents the slave trade (1632-1704) -- The many faces of David Hume (1711-1776) -- Rousseau the rogue (1712-78) -- Kant, the chinaman of Knigsburg (and his rule-bound existence) (1724-1804) -- The idealists -- Gottfried Leibniz, the thinking machine (1646-1716) -- Bishop Berkeley's Bermuda College (1685-1753) -- Headmaster Hegel and the dangerous lesson of history (1770-1831) -- Arthur Schopenhauer and his landlady (1788-1860) -- The romantics -- The seduction of Soren Kierkegaard (1813- circa 1853) -- Mill's poetical turn (1806-73) -- Henry Thoreau and life in the shed (1817-1862) -- Marx's revolutionary materialism (1818-83) -- Recent philosophy -- Russell denotes domething (1872-1970) -- The ripping yarn of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) -- Heidegger's tale (and the Nazis) (1889-1976) -- Sapir-whorf and the colour pinker (c.1900-1950) -- Being Sartre and not definitely not being De Beauvoir (1905-80 and not 1908-86) -- Deconstructing Derrida (1930-2005).

Prologue : the story of human society -- Plato's vegetarian republic -- Confucius' polite society -- Aristotle and the hierarchy of nature -- Mohammed's message of doom -- Machiavelli's psychopathic state -- Hobbes' wicked world -- Locke's feudal freedom -- Rousseau's ode to liberty -- The founding fathers' constitutional recipe -- Mr. Smith's excellent inquiry into money -- Marx's messianic materialism -- Mill's optimistic liberalism -- Durkheim's strange science -- The philosophical dance with fascism -- Hitler's doctrine of hate -- Mao's little red book -- Epilogue : the end of history?