John Leslie | College of Arts

John Leslie

University Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, University of Guelph
Adjunct Professor, Philosophy Department, University of Victoria, British Columbia
Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada

Contact Information:
Address: 2066 Gourman Place,
Victoria, British Columbia
V9B 6E1, Canada

Telephone: 250-391-3908   

E-mail: johnlesl@uoguelph.ca

General:

 Born August 2, 1940. Educated in Britain. Entered Wadham College, Oxford, with a college open major scholarship in English Literature. B.A.,1962, in Philosophy and Psychology. Went into Advertising (McCann-Erickson, London) with the idea that work as a copywriter could be reconciled with writing ambitions. Deciding that the universe and possible reasons for its existence were the most exciting things to write about, returned to Oxford to generate a thesis in Philosophy: resulting academic life described below. Interests include mountaineering and rock climbing (initial triumphs, including winning a wife, Jill, from the Oxford University Mountaineering Club, followed by slow decline and a move to canoeing); travel (organized expeditions to the volcanoes Hekla and Sangay); coral-reef snorkelling; languages (good French, reading ability in several others); Go, chess and other board games. [Designed ‘WorldMaster’, marketed by three board game companies, all of them swept away by the rise of computer games, and ‘Hostage Chess’: see the chapter about it in D.B.Pritchard, “Popular Chess Variants” (Batsford: London, 2000) or read my book on it at www.hostagechess.com, the website of Paul Connors of Aristophanes Press. At the same website you can download ‘HostageMaster’, a strong computer opponent that Paul programmed.] Children: Tom and Kate.

Academic activities:

M.Litt. in Literae Humaniores (a research degree in Philosophy) Oxford, 1971. Became Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Guelph, rising to Professor in 1982. Interests in Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Religion, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Mind, Ethics, led to teaching almost everything except Existentialism and Phenomenology. Vice-Chair, then Chair, of the Guelph-McMaster Joint Doctoral Programme (one of Canada’s largest in Philosophy), 1977-80. Assistant Secretary, then Secretary, of the Canadian Philosophical Association, 1982-1984. Canada Council Research Grant, 1973-4, for work on a book in metaphysics and philosophy of religion which later appeared as “Value and Existence”; Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Fellowship, 1980-1, for work on the Argument from Design and modern cosmology, leading to “Universes”; 1986 Forster Fellowship; University of Guelph Research Excellence Awards in 1988 and 1989; SSHRC Research Grant, 1991-2. Visiting professor of Religious Studies, University of Calgary, Winter 1986. Visiting fellowship at Australian National University, Research School of Philosophy, in 1987. Visitor at the Institute of Astrophysics, University of Liège, in 1993, funded at the full-professor level by Belgium’s National Foundation for Scientific Research. In 1997, elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and in October-November 1998 acted as the British Academy–Royal Society of Canada Exchange Lecturer (every second year, some FRSC tours Britain while in intervening years some FBA tours Canada). Took advantage of the Special Early Retirement Plan which the University of Guelph introduced to improve its finances, becoming University Professor Emeritus in 1999. Adjunct Professor of Philosophy, University of Victoria, 2005 onwards.

Publications:

ABSTRACTS of many of these, and FULL TEXTS of some, are at the website 

researchgate.net/profile/John_Leslie7/research

Books:

  • Value and Existence (Blackwell: Oxford, 1979, in the American Philosophical Quarterly Library): Investigation of the Platonic idea that God is the world’s ethical requiredness, a factor itself creatively successful, and of the world-picture to which this leads.
  • Universes (Routledge: London and New York, 1989): A work in philosophy of cosmology and philosophy of religion. Chosen by the Astronomy Book Club and the Library of Science Book Club. Paperback edition in 1996. Published also as an ebook (an electronic book). Chapter One reprinted as pages 451-68 of editor M.C.Rea, Arguing About Metaphysics, Routledge, 2009.
  • Physical Cosmology and Philosophy (Macmillan: New York, 1990): A paperback book of readings with 10,000 word Editorial Introduction, bibliography and glossary, for the Macmillan series ‘Philosophical Topics’ (General Editor Paul Edwards). The first-ever collection of readings entirely devoted to recent cosmology and its philosophy. Chosen by the Library of Science Book Club. Republished in 1998, expanded, once again in paperback, by Prometheus Books: Amherst NY, under the new title Modern Cosmology and Philosophy.
  • The End of the World: the science and ethics of human extinction (Routledge: London and New York, 1996): Analyses the risk that the human race will soon be extinct (estimating it at about 30%) and asks why its extinction would be tragic. Much of the book expands “Time and the Anthropic Principle”, Mind July 1992: see below. At the head of Routledge’s Trade Catalogue for Spring 1996, so I was put on “author tour” to support it. Chosen by the Library of Science Book Club. Paperback edition, with new Preface, in 1998. Published also as an ebook (an electronic book). Translated into Japanese and Chinese, and in part into German: the book’s pages 2-13 became “Theorien zum Weltuntergang”, pp.67-78 of the March 1996 issue of GDI impuls, journal of the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute for Economic and Social Studies.
  • Infinite Minds: a philosophical cosmology (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2001, paperback 2003). Revisits the Platonic creation story of Value and Existence (see above), showing how it leads to a Spinozistic pantheism of infinitely many divine minds, each of infinite complexity; the structure of our universe, and of countless others, would be part of that complexity. Published also as an ebook (an electronic book). 
  • Immortality Defended (Blackwell: Oxford, 2007, hardback and paperback): Develops and expands themes from “Infinite Minds” for the general reader as well as for academics and their students. Published also as an ebook (an electronic book).
  •  The Mystery of Existence: Why is there anything at all? (Wiley-Blackwell: Malden MA, 2013, hardcover and paperback). Editors John Leslie and Robert Lawrence Kuhn. Collects some fifty writings by philosophers, theologians, physicists and cosmologists, from Plato onwards. With 30,000 words of Editorial Introductions, and very extensive Suggestions for Further Reading. 

Articles in Edited Volumes:

  • “The best world possible.” Pages 43-72 of The Challenge of Religion Today, editor J.King-Farlow: Neale Watson, New York, 1976 (in the Canadian Contemporary Philosophy series).
  • “Cosmology, Probability and the Need to Explain Life.” Pages 53-82 of Scientific Explanation and Understanding, editor N.Rescher, co-publishers the Center for Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh, and University Press of America: Lanham and London, 1983. [An expanded version of a Mellon Foundation Lecture.]
  • “Modern Cosmology and the Creation of Life.” Pages 91-120 of Evolution and Creation, editor E.McMullin: University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, 1985.
  •  “The scientific weight of anthropic and teleological principles.” Pages 111-119 of Current Issues in Teleology, editor N.Rescher: Center for Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh, and University Press of America, Lanham and London, 1986.  
  • "Anthropic Explanations in Cosmology.” Pages 87-95 of PSA 1986: Volume One, editors A.Fine and P.Machamer (Proceedings of the 1986 Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association): Edwards Brothers, Ann Arbor, 1986.
  • “Probabilistic Phase Transitions and the Anthropic Principle.” Pages 439-444 of Origin and Early History of the Universe, editor J.Demaret (Proceedings of the 26th Liège International Astrophysical Colloquium): Presses of the University of Liège, Liège, 1987.
  • “The Leibnizian Richness of Our Universe.” Pages 139-146 of Leibnizian Inquiries, editor N.Rescher: Center for Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh, and University Press of America, Lanham and London, 1989.
  • “The Prerequisites of Life in Our Universe.” Pages 229-258 of Newton and the New Direction in Science, editors G.V.Coyne, M.Heller and J.Zycinski: Citta del Vaticano, 1988. [From a conference of the Vatican Astronomical Observatory and the Pontifical Academy of Theology: Cracow, 1987.] Reprinted in Truth, a journal of studies in religion, on pages 97-119 of Vol. 3, Fall 1990, a Special Issue on the Cosmological and Design Arguments. Also as pages 403-425 of The Existence of God, editors R.M.Gale and A.Pruss: Ashgate Publishing, Aldershot U.K., 2003, and as pages 114-129 of Philosophy of Religion: A Reader and Guide, editor W.L.Craig: Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2001. 
  • “How to draw conclusions from a fine-tuned universe.” Pages 297-311 of Physics, Philosophy and Theology, editors R.J.Russell, W.R.Stoeger and G.V.Coyne: Vatican Observatory, Vatican City State, 1988, distributed by University of Notre Dame Press. [A volume coming from the papal Newton Tercentenary Workshop, “Our Vision and Knowledge of God and Nature”: Castel Gandolfo, 1987.]
  • “Predictions and the Anthropic Principle.” Pages 45-50 of Baer and Modern Biology (Folia Baeriana Vol. VI), editors T.Sutt, A.Heinaru, V.Kaavere, H.Kallak, A.Piirsoo: publishers the University of Tartu and the Estonian Academy of Science, 1993. [Proceedings of the Academy’s Baer Bicentenary Conference in Tartu, 1992.]
  • “Creation Stories, Religious and Atheistic”, reprinted from International Journal for Philosophy of Religion (October 1993) as pages 337-353 of editors R.A.Varghese and C.Matthews, Cosmic Beginnings and Human Ends, Open Court, Chicago, 1994.
  • Five articles (“Cosmology”, “Cosmos”, “Finite/ Infinite”, “World”, “Why There Is Something”) in A Companion to Metaphysics, editors J.Kim and E.Sosa: Blackwell, Oxford, 1995.
  • “The Anthropic Principle Today.” Pages 163-187 of Final Causality in Nature, editor R.Hassing: Catholic University of America Press, Washington, 1997.
  • “Cosmology and Theology”, in the all-electronic Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy at http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2003/entries/cosmology-theology/ First appeared in 1998. Printed, updated by an Afterword, as pages 127-156 of editor C.Tandy, Death and AntiDeath Vol.6: Thirty Years after Kurt Gödel: Ria University Press, Palo Alto, 2009.
  • “Risking Human Extinction.” Pages 117–129 of Human Survivability in the 21st Century, editor D.M.Hayne (Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada Series VI, Vol. IX ): University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1999.
  • “Intelligent Life in Our Universe.” Pages 119–132 of Many Worlds, editor S.J.Dick: Templeton Foundation Press, Philadelphia and London, 2000.
  • “The Divine Mind.” Pages 73-89 of Philosophy, the Good, the True and the Beautiful, editor A.O’Hear: Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000. This was a Public Lecture of November 1998 at the Royal Institute of Philosophy.]
  • “Anti Anti-Realism.” Pages 111-117 of Idealism, Metaphysics and Community, editor W.Sweet: Ashgate Press, London, 2000.
  • “The Meaning of ‘Design’.” Pages 128-138 of Cosmic Questions, editor J.B.Miller (Annals of The New York Academy of Sciences, Vol. 950): New York, 2001. Reprinted as pages 55-65 of editor N.Manson, God and Design: Routledge, London, 2003.  
  • “How Will the World End?”, article from Times Higher Education Supplement (October 2002) reprinted as pages 215-219 of Big Questions in Science, editor H.Swain: Jonathan Cape, London, 2002.
  • “Why Not Let Life Become Extinct?”, article from Philosophy (July 1983) reprinted as pages 123-133 of editor D.Benatar, Life, Death and Meaning: Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, 2004.
  • “How Many Divine Minds?” Pages 123-134 of Consciousness, Reality and Value: Essays in Honour of T.L.S.Sprigge, editors P.Basile and L.B.McHenry: Ontos Verlag, Frankfurt, 2007.
  • “World Ensemble, or Design”, the reprinted Chapter One of Universes (Routledge: London and New York, 1989), as pages 451–468 of Arguing About Metaphysics, editor M.C.Rea: Routledge, New York and London, 2009.
  • "The Doomsday Argument”, from The Mathematical Intelligencer Vol.14 No.2 (Spring 1992), pp.48-51, reprinted as pages 257-9 of Science Fiction and Philosophy: From Time Travel to Superintelligence, editor S.Schneider: Wiley-Blackwell, Malden MA, 2009.
  • “A Proof of God’s Reality”. Pages 128-143 of The Puzzle of Existence: Why is there something rather than nothing?, editor T.Goldschmidt: Routledge, London and New York, 2015, and also pages 411-427 of Gottesbeweise als Herausforderung für die moderne Vernunft, editors T.Buchheim, F.Hermanni, A.Hutter, C.Schwöbel: Mohr Siebeck Verlag, Tübingen, 2012.
  • “God and Many Universes”, pages 192-207 of God and the Multiverse: Scientific, Philosophical and Theological Perspectives, editor K.J.Kraay: Routledge, New York, 2015.
  • “A Way of Picturing God”, pages 50-63 of Alternative Concepts of God, editors A.Buckareff and Y.Nagasawa: Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2016.

Articles in Journals:

  • “Mental Health”, Oxford Opinion 1961, pp.12-19. [Based on vacation work in a mental hospital.]
  • “The Theory that the World Exists Because It Should”, American Philosophical Quarterly Vol.7, No.4, October 1970, pp.286-98. [A ten thousand word summary of the Oxford M.Litt. thesis.]
  • “Morality in a World Guaranteed Best Possible”, Studia Leibnitiana Band 3 Heft 3, 1971, pp.199-205.
  • “Ethically Required Existence”, American Philosophical Quarterly Vol.9 No.3, July 1972, pp.215-224.
  • “Does Causal Regularity Defy Chance?”, Idealistic Studies Vol.3 No.3, September 1973, pp.277-284.
  • “The Value of Time”, American Philosophical Quarterly Vol.13 No.2, April 1976, pp.109-121.
  • “God and Scientific Verifiability”, Philosophy Vol.53 No.203, January 1978, pp.71-79.
  • “Efforts to Explain All Existence”, Mind Vol.87 No.346, April 1978, pp.181-194.
  • “The World’s Necessary Existence”, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion Vol.11 No.4, Winter 1980, pp.207-223.
  • “Anthropic Principle, World Ensemble, Design”, American Philosophical Quarterly Vol.19 No.2, April 1982, pp.141-151 (some misprints were corrected in the October issue).
  •  “Why Not Let Life Become Extinct?”, Philosophy Vol.58 No.225, July 1983, pp.329-338. Reprinted as pages 123-133 of editor D.Benatar, Life, Death and Meaning: Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, 2004.
  • “Observership in Cosmology: the Anthropic Principle”, Mind Vol.92 No.368, October 1983, pp.573-579.
  • “Mackie on Neoplatonism’s ‘Replacement for God’.” Religious Studies Vol.22, Nos. 3/4, Sept./Dec. 1986, pp.325-342. [Reacts to chapter 13 of J.L.Mackie's The Miracle of Theism (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1982), a chapter mainly about my Value and Existence.]
  • “Moral Truth”, Dialogue Vol.26 No.3, Autumn 1987, pp.437-451. [Written in collaboration with five other members of an Ethics Research Group.]
  • “No Inverse Gambler’s Fallacy in Cosmology”, Mind Vol.97 No.386, April 1988, pp.269-272. [See also my letter on the same point on page 6 of The Economist May 20, 1989.]
  • “Dialectics versus Metaphysics”, a philosophical exchange with D.Goldstick: pp.1-12 of Explorations in Knowledge Vol.6 No.1, 1989.
  • “The Need to Generate Happy People”, Philosophia Vol.19 No.1, May 1989, pp.29-33.
  • “Demons, Vats and the Cosmos”, Philosophical Papers Vol.18 No.2, September 1989, pp.169-88.
  • “Risking the World’s End”, Bulletin of the Canadian Nuclear Society Vol.10 No.3, May/June 1989, pp.10-15. Reprinted in Interchange Vol.21 No.1, 1990 (a volume on Proof in Mathematics), pp.49-58.
  • “Is the End of the World Nigh?”, The Philosophical Quarterly Vol.40 No.158, January 1990, pp.65-72.
  • “Ensuring Two Bird Deaths With One Throw”, Mind Vol.100 No.397, January 1991, pp.73-86. [On Newcomb’s Problem in decision theory.]
  • “Doomsday Revisited”, The Philosophical Quarterly Vol.42 No.166, January 1992, pp.85-89.
  • “The Doomsday Argument”, The Mathematical Intelligencer Vol.14 No.2, Spring 1992, pp.48-51. Reprinted as pages 257-9 of Science Fiction and Philosophy: From Time Travel to Superintelligence, editor S.Schneider: Wiley-Blackwell, Malden MA, 2009.
  • “Design and the Anthropic Principle”, Biology and Philosophy Vol.7 No.3, 1992, pp.349-354
  • “Time and the Anthropic Principle”, Mind Vol.101 No.403, July 1992, pp.521-540. [A much shortened version appeared as pp.363-366 of editors V.P.Brancy, F.V.Mustafin,A.V.Nesteruk,Yu.I.Swetov, A.V.Soldator, M.Heller, K.Schmitz-Moorman, Of Origins of the  World in Science and Technology: Petropolis, St.-Petersburg, 1993. An initial version had been read to the Soviet Academy of Sciences at its conference “Time and Cosmology”: Leningrad, 1990.]
  • “Bayes, Urns and Doomsday”, Interchange Vol.23 No.3, September 1992, pp.289-295.
  • “Doom and Probabilities”, Mind Vol.102 No.407, July 1993, pp.489-491.
  • “Creation Stories, Religious and Atheistic” (from a Workshop of the Israeli Academy of Sciences and the Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science: Tel Aviv, 1992), International Journal for Philosophy of Religion Vol.34 No.2, October 1993, pp.65-77. Reprinted as pages 337-353 of editors R.A.Varghese and C.Matthews, Cosmic Beginnings and Human Ends: Open Court, Chicago, 1994.
  •  “A Spinozistic Vision of God”, Religious Studies Vol.29 No.3, 1993, pp.277-286.
  • “More About Doom”, The Mathematical Intelligencer Vol.15 No.3, Spring 1993, pp.5-7.
  • “Anthropic Predictions”, Philosophia Vol.23 Nos.1/4, July 1994, pp.117-144.
  • “Testing the Doomsday Argument”, Journal of Applied Philosophy Vol.11 No.1, 1994, pp.31-44.
  • “Fine Tuning Can be Important”, Australasian Journal of Philosophy Vol.72 No.3, September 1994, page 383.
  • “Cosmology: a Philosophical Survey”, Philosophia Vol.24 Nos.1/2, December 1994, pp.3-27.
  • “The End is More Nigh” (title generated by a sub-editor), The Times Higher Education Supplement February 16, 1996, page 15.
  • “A Difficulty for Everett’s Many-Worlds Theory”, International Studies in the Philosophy of Science Vol.10 No.3, October 1996, pp.239-246. [I had circulated a draft of this to several people. To my surprise, the draft appeared in print as “Should Cosmologists Avoid Everett’s Many-Worlds Theory?”, Diotima Vol. 33, 2005, pp. 22-25. Unlike the article published nine years earlier, the one in Diotima failed to make the important point that Everett’s theory can survive if interpreted in a particular way.]
  • “A Neoplatonist’s Pantheism”, The Monist Vol.80. No.2, April 1997, pp.218-231.
  • “Duty to Live Long and be Ordinary” (title generated by a sub-editor), Financial Times Weekend 12/13 April 1997, page III.
  • “The End of the World is Not Nigh”, Nature Vol.387, 22 May 1997, pp.338-339. [Reacts to Freeman Dyson’s misunderstanding of the Carter-Leslie version of the Doomsday Argument.]
  • “Observer-Relative Chances and the Doomsday Argument”, Inquiry Vol.40 No.4, December 1997, pp.427-436.
  • “Just How Nigh Is The End?”, At Guelph March 24, 1999, page 6. [Marking the publication of a paperback version of my The End of the World, this summarizes its main themes.]
  • “Our Place in the Cosmos”, Philosophy Vol.75 No.291, January 2000, pp.5-24.
  • “ ‘Doom Soon’ Scenarios”, The Times Higher Education Supplement October 4, 2002, pp.18-19. Reprinted as “How will the world end?", pages 215-219 of Big Questions in Science, editor H.Swain: Jonathan Cape, London, 2002.
  • “Fine Tuning and Divine Design”, Maritain Studies Vol. XVIII, 2002, pp.3-13.
  • “Pantheism and Platonic Creation”, Philosophia Christi Vol.5 No.2, 2003, pp.575-580.
  • “Infinitely Long Afterlives and the Doomsday Argument”, Philosophy Vol.83 No.326, October 2008, pp.519-524.
  • “A Cosmos Existing Through Ethical Necessity”, in Philo Special Issue on Theism and Naturalism, Vol.12 No.2, Fall/Winter 2009, pp.172-187. Reprinted as pages 126-141 of The  Mystery of Existence, editors J.Leslie and R.L.Kuhn, Wiley-Blackwell: Malden MA, 2013.
  • “What Things Really Exist”?, a 2,000-word contribution of April 17, 2009, to the on-line journal Science and Religion Today ( www.scienceandreligiontoday.com ).
  •  “The Risk that Humans Will Soon Be Extinct”, Philosophy Vol.85 No.334, October 2010, pages 447-463. [Themes from this filled a lecture of 2011 at the Science Festival “La Fine del Mondo” in Rome.]
  • “What God might be”, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion Vol.85 No.1, February 2019, pages 63-75.  [Also available on-line for payment, or by institutional or library subscription to the Journal, at http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11153-018-9686-x ]
  • “Infinity and the Problem of Evil”, European Journal for Philosophy of Religion Vol.11 No.2, 2019), pages 111-117.
  • Also articles on Hostage Chess in the journals Variant Chess (Issue 36, Autumn 2000, page 60; Issue 37, Spring 2001, page 87; Issue 59, January 2009, pages 82-3) and Abstract Games (Issue 4, Winter 2000, pages 17-19; Issue 5, Spring 2001, pages 19-21; Issue 7, Autumn 2001, pages 26-28).

Book Reviews:

  • of J.T.Fraser and N.Lawrence, eds., The Study of Time II (Springer Verlag: New York, 1975). In Philosophy of Science Vol.45 No.2, June 1978, pp.322-324.
  • of E.Partridge, ed., Responsibilities to Future Generations (Prometheus Books: Buffalo, 1981). In Social Indicators Research Vol.12, 1983, pp.323-336.
  • of J.King-Farlow, Self-Knowledge and Social Relations (Science History Publications: New York, 1978). In Social Indicators Research Vol.13, 1983, pp.425-427.
  • of H.A.Meynell, The Intelligible Universe (Macmillan: New York, 1982). In Canadian Philosophical Reviews Vol.IV No.4, August 1984, pp.164-165.
  • of N.Rescher, The Riddle of Existence (University Press of America: Lanham, 1984). In Philosophy of Science Vol.52 No.3, September 1985, pp.485-486.
  • of J.Faye, The Reality of the Future (Odense: Odense University Press, 1989). A “Critical Notice” in Dialogue Vol.29 No.3, 1990, pp.441-445.
  • of A.Peacocke, God and the New Biology (Harper and Row: New York, 1986). In Journal of Social and Biological Structures Vol.13 No.2, 1990, pp.279-282.
  • of A.C.Lloyd, The Anatomy of Neoplatonism (Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1990). In Philosophical Books Vol.32 No.2, April 1991, pp.78-80.
  • of D.Layzer, Cosmogenesis (Oxford University Press: New York, 1990). In Journal of  Social and Biological Structures Vol.14 No.3, 1991, pp.358-360.
  • of J.Post, Metaphysics (Paragon House: New York, 1991). In Canadian Philosophical Reviews Vol.11 No.6, December 1991, pp.408-409.
  • of S.Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory (Hutchinson: London, 1993) and P.W.Atkins, Creation Revisited (W.H.Freeman: Oxford, 1992). In Times Literary Supplement January 29, 1993, pp.3-4.
  • of E.E.Harris, Cosmos and Anthropos (Humanities Press: New York, 1991). In Philosophy of Science Vol.60 No.4, December 1993, pp.667-669.
  • of D.J.O’Meara, Plotinus: An Introduction to the Enneads (Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1993). In Philosophical Books Vol.35 No.2, April 1994, pp.102-103.
  • of S.W.Hawking, Black Holes and Baby Universes and other essays (Bantam Press: London, 1993), and D.Bohm and B.Hiley, The Undivided Universe: an Ontological Interpretation of Quantum Theory (Routledge: London and New York, 1993). In London Review of Books May 12, 1994, pp.5-16.
  • of F.J.Tipler, The Physics of Immortality (Macmillan: London, 1995). In London Review of Books March 23, 1995, pp.7-8.
  • of S.W.Hawking and R.Penrose, The Nature of Space and Time (Princeton University Press: Princeton, 1996). In London Review of Books August 1, 1996, pp.18-19. [A reader’s letter about a point made in this review appeared in the issue of September 19; I reacted in a letter on page 4 of the issue of October 17.]
  • of W.L.Craig and Q.Smith, Theism, Atheism and Big Bang Cosmology (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1993). In Zygon Vol.10 No.3, June 1996, pp.345-349.
  • of F.D.Peat, Infinite Potential: the life and times of David Bohm (Addison-Wesley: New York, 1997). In The Globe and Mail (Toronto), January 25, 1997, page D10.
  • of F.J.Dyson, Imagined Worlds (Harvard University Press: Boston, 1997). In London Review of Books June 5, 1997, pp.10-11.
  • of M.Rees, Before the Beginning: Our Universe and Others (Simon and Schuster: London, 1998) and L.Smolin, The Life of the Cosmos (Weidenfeld and Nicolson: London, 1997). In London Review of Books January 1, 1998, pp.26-28.
  • of D.Garrett, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1996). In Philosophical Books Vol.39 No.3, 1998, pp.163-165.
  • of P.Edwards, Reincarnation: A Critical Examination (Prometheus Books: Amherst NY, 1996). In Philosophical Books Vol.39 No.4, 1998, pp.275-278.
  • of J.Magueijo, Faster than the Speed of Light (Heinemann: London, 2003). In Times Literary Supplement April 4, 2003, pp.28-9.
  • of M.Rees, Our Final Century (Heinemann: London, 2003). In Times Literary Supplement August 1, 2003, pp.6-7.
  • of B.Rundle, Why there is Something rather than Nothing (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2004). In Mind January 2005, pp.197-200.
  • of S.W.Hawking, The Grand Design (Bantam: New York, 2010) and R.Penrose, Cycles of Time (Bodley Head: London, 2010). In Times Literary Supplement December 10, 2010,pp.3-4.
  • of N.Rescher, Axiogenesis (Lexington Books: Lanham, 2010). In The Review of  Metaphysics Vol.LXV No.2, December 2011, pp.441-443.
  • of S.Weinberg, To Explain the World: the Discovery of Modern Science. In Times Literary Supplement May 8, 2015, pp.3-4.

Other Things:

  • Many talks on philosophy, some on physics, at conferences and to university departments.
  • Many contributions to a PBS-TV “Closer to Truth” series, “Cosmos, Consciousness, God”, broadcast on numerous stations in the United States. In videos at www.closertotruth.com and to be made available in book form.
  • Five lectures with PowerPoint slides, general title “The Mystery of Existence”, to the Fifth INPE Advanced Course on Astrophysics, given at the São Paulo branch of Brazil’s National Institute for Space Studies in 2013. [That year’s Advanced Course concentrated on problems of Cosmology. A .pdf file of the PowerPoint slides would be emailed to those who asked for it.]
  • Referee/publisher’s reader for many articles and books in philosophy and in physics/ cosmology.
  • Supervisor for doctoral theses. External Examiner for doctoral theses and for an “habilitation” thesis (the hurdle after the doctorate in the French university system).
  • Three periods on the Editorial Board of the American Philosophical Quarterly.