(Prometheus Books) Box 664, Buffalo, NY 14226-0664, USA

The introduction to a book is usually written last and read first, which enables the author to tell the reader the gist of what he wants to say, providing a clue, the thread that guides through the labyrinth - which may be needed. Paul Kurtz states on the first page that he is advocating the scepticism of positive inquiry. William James defined "philosophy" as an unusually persistent attempt to think clearly. It is pertinent to ask of any serious statement what exactly is asserted, on what grounds, and do those grounds warrant its truth? Casual acceptance or rejection, or indifference, is ruled out. This is sensible enough.

What, then, is new about The New Scepticism? At the end, one finds that what is new is the advocacy of systematic application of this routine to politics (policy-making), ethical choices and decisions, the Practice of education. That would bring philosophy into the social and personal organisation of human life: not Plato's Philosopher King, but routine adoption at grassroots level of rational standards in all affairs. This is the radical proposal he justifies by having shown how and why the standard was established, and how it would affect beliefs and practice.

The book is divided into four. Part I "Scepticism in Perspective" distinguishes three kinds of scepticism and traces their history in antiquity and modem times in the West. Part 2 "Inquiry and Objectivity" sifts through the epistemological arguments, to show the ground on which modern science relies to justify its exclusive authority for trustworthy knowledge. Part 3 'The Paranormal, Religion and Fantasy". On unbelief, he does not endorse atheism unless it is the position of one who has rejected belief because necessary grounds for it have not been established. A preliminary question is what intelligible meaning "God" can have. Part 4 "The Judgements of Practice". This is the place in which he develops the radical proposal to adopt the standpoint and method of philosophy for the organisation of social and personal life.

In the final chapter, he addresses the need to deal with the fragmentation brought about by the explosion of knowledge; the proliferation of specialist findings that has made even scientists strangers to one another. Competing metaphysical systems used to offer World Hypotheses for human orientation, not justified by convincing evidence, and now outmoded. With a bewilderingly diverse accumulation of attested evidence, the need for synthesis is urgent, and supremely difficult. Kurtz stresses the immense difficulties, and questions the possibility. He advocates a new academic discipline to tackle over future years this problem: Eupraxophy (a neologism based on the Greek roots eu -- good, praxis - practice, sophia -- wisdom}.

I am astonished by no mention of Democritus in the section on antiquity. He was not associated with skepticism as a position, but he was an exemplary practitioner. He confronted Plato's Idealism with its fatal disregard of sense experience. Plato is reputed to have so feared him that he wanted to burn his books, but they were too well known. Moreover, with the dethronement of Aristotle and foundation of empirical science in the seventeenth century, Democritus was the preferred name in ancient philosophy. Carneades, perhaps the finest philosophic mind in the postclassical period, is given the space and reasoned appreciation he merits.

In the last and most radical and new part of the book, he notes how the contemporary contest has modified adversarial positions, for what he is commending is both liberal and conservative. (The same is true of the "mixed economy", combining socialist and conservative principles.) His thesis requires that education should be fundamentally from the first a training in the discipline of skeptical inquiry, the pioneering position of Dewey (The School and the Child) in his Chicago days, which had world-wide influence, and is now in eclipse, if not repudiated by the makers of policy. The Greek sophist Ssocrates had argued for this at the end of the classical period. Hellas, he said, is known as the school of the world because its culture is universal, starting out from the standpoint of inquiry, because there is not and never can be the authority of unchallengeable knowledge which Plato was looking for. Since then, two traditions have continued in the history of education: induction and instruction, with the inculcation of an orthodoxy; education of critical intelligence as the rudder of life.

Are reasonable assumptions different now from what they were at the time of the Enlightenment and after, when Europe was invited on the strength of the spectacular success of science to put faith in reason and self-help, not Providence and God, for shaping things to come? Bentham's prescription for social policy was: investigate, legislate, inspect; and his disciple Edwin Chadwick framed the Public Health Act as the foundation of preventive or community medicine. Today, there is no prevailing faith in the rule of reason. Rather, feelings and fantasies are allowed infinite scope, or "anything goes", in a climate of chronic uncertainty and bewilderment.

There is no European culture any more, religious or secular. This book is against the tide, but called for because the tide cannot be taken at the flood, and leaves all the voyage of our lives to be spent in shallows, flats, and miseries. Apart from pulling an oar to get us out of that, his books is worthy of all praise for its informed comprehensiveness and straightforward exposition, which is also meticulous and scrupulously fair, constrained by the standard he advocates and exemplifies. Full marks.