Abstract

Naturalism is sometimes cast as the claim that there is nothing supernatural, nothing ‘spooky’ in the world. One can see that naturalism has two aspects: it makes claims about what there is, and it makes claims about knowledge and explanation. This chapter considers the ontological aspect first, so that one can see what is at stake when comes to the second, epistemological, aspect. The great advantage of methodological naturalism is that it leaves open the question of whether full‐strength, unconditional naturalism is true. The essentials of humanism have two aspects: a rejection of magical views of the universe in favour of some sort of naturalism, and a rejection of nihilism. The first aspect is relatively easy; the history and current successes of the natural sciences make an irresistible case for it. The subtle part, for humanists, is to establish a naturalism that is compatible with the anti‐nihilist aspect.