That familiar phrase “define your terms” can halt seminars, end tedious argument, and buy you thinking time. It is also a serious imperative for our times, particularly when trying to marry the two halves of scientific enquiry: broad narrative and detailed evidence.
The narrative and the evidence for the relationship between the mind and the body, for example, don’t match. This burdens our attempts to explain what it is that we understand, even what knowledge is. The title of There’s Something About Mary, edited by Peter Ludlow and others (MIT Press, $35, £22.99), comes from a fascinating thought experiment…
