‘A Philosophical Naturalist’ Introduction

This book is a philosophical introduction to Darwin. It explores and evaluates the relevance of Darwin’s thinking for The Big Questions – traditional philosophical questions about the mind, ethics, knowledge, politics and science. How can there be such a book? Darwin was not a philosopher, he was a natural historian. His published works are about coral reefs, climbing plants, barnacles, earthworms and orchids – they are not works of philosophy. Indeed, Darwin sometimes portrays himself as a philosophical airhead: ‘My power to follow a long and purely abstract train of thought is very limited; I should, moreover, never have succeeded with metaphysics or mathematics’ (Autobiography: 85).