A collection of short essays that range across philosophy, politics, general culture, morality, science, religion and art, focusing on questions of meaning, value and understanding. ENDORSEMENT BY - Alan Massie "Professor Haldane's essays are serious in the way that the great writers of the Scottish Enlightenment were serious. He asks what it means to be human in the twenty-first century, and what ethical obligations our idea of humanity imposes on us. They are provocative in the best, and only useful, sense of the word: inviting the reader to consider and respond to his arguments. Their range is wide, extending from a disquisition on the morality of stem-cell research to a very funny parody of 'The Da Vinci Code'." THE TABLET REVIEW The Tablet - Christopher Howse Jun 28, 2008 [is] a series of 20 essays on philosophy that add up to an argument for the human usefulness of thinking methodically about cosmology, society, ethics, religion and art... Haldane's interests are wide, embracing popular culture, from the Exorcist to John Buchan, and taking in native thinkers from the Scottish Enlightenment ... [and] he is adept at relating the slippery field of aesthetics to a wider world view. ... These essays are entertaining [and] possess a flavour of humanity, openness, urbanity, and an underlying infectious optimism in taking the cosmos to be intelligible and ethics as possible." THE CATHOLIC HERALD REVIEW The Catholic Herald - Jonathan Wright Sep 11, 2008