Abstract

These essays from one of our most stimulating thinkers showcase Tallis's infectious fascination, indeed intoxication, with the infinite complexity of human lives and the human condition. In the title essay, we join Tallis on a stroll around his local park - and the intricate passages of his own consciousness - as he uses the motif of the walk, the amble, to occasion a series of meditations on the freedoms that only human beings possess. In subsequent essays, the flaneur thinks about his brain, his relationship to the rest of the animal kingdom, his profession of medicine and about the physical world and the claims of physical science to have rendered philosophical reflection obsolete. Taken together the essays continue Tallis's mission to elaborate a vision of humanity that rejects religious myths while not succumbing to scientism or any other form of naturalism. Written with the author's customary intellectual energy and vigour these essays provoke, move and challenge us to think differently about who we are and our place in the material world