A Review

I don’t as a rule reply to reviews of my books, but every rule has exceptions. Kerry McKenzie’s review of my Basic Structures of Reality in Mind calls for brief comment. There is much I could say about this review but I will confine myself to one very telling point. She pours scorn on my contention that physics is epistemologically limited in important ways—that physicists (and everyone else) are deeply ignorant of the intrinsic nature of the material world. She contrives to make it sound as if this view is an eccentricity dreamt up by me alone. The reader would never guess from her review that the view in question is derived from the work of Poincare, Russell, Eddington, Chomsky, Galen Strawson, Michael Lockwood, and many others. It is by no means original with me but entirely derivative and commonplace (I cite and quote these authors often). So I am placed by our intrepid reviewer in the same class as these ignorant nincompoops who don’t understand the first thing about physics. McKenzie never mentions any of these figures in her review in connection with the view in question. I wonder why not.

About other aspects of the review I will only remark that it is absolutely hysterical, ad hominem, and completely devoid of any sense of critical decency. Nor did I detect any real philosophy in it.