What a read! Maxwell’s latest book is a real page turner: which often cannot be said for many other academic books. His work is erudite and his vision for the reshaping of higher education –the ‘redrawing of our intellectual landscape’ is compelling.

The drum beat to which this book marches is the question of how can our human world, and the world of sentient life more generally, imbued with perceptual qualities, consciousness, free will, meaning and value, exist and best flourish embedded as it is in the physical universe?

The book has a dialectical structure, beginning with a thorough examination of the figures who contributed to the ‘triumphs of natural philosophy’ and the emergence of science. He proceeds to enumerate what he considers to be the critical failures of philosophy and moves on to make a good case for why science and philosophy need once again to nurture each other. His final chapter –the implications of natural philosophy for the problems of civilization– is something of a triumph itself as he articulates his vision of an aim-oriented rationality that he believes (and I think correctly!) would promote the growth of a sorely needed practical wisdom (‘a modern version of natural philosophy’) in the academy and society at large.

There are many things to like about this book. It is pertinent, discerning, wide-ranging and above all thorough in an argument that asks important questions of both science and philosophy and more especially of the nature of higher education. It provides essential formative reading for university and college students.

While I relish his hope that education through his aim-oriented rationality would ‘stimulate wonder and curiosity’ and ‘enrich the imagination’ I am a little curious as to why his passion for rationality in education appears to eschew other ‘non-rational forms of knowledge and wisdom. Also why his focus is so firmly on the human when it could be profitably and problematized and enriched by a greater acknowledgement of the presence of the ‘more-than-human world’ (David Abram’s phrase) After all, it strikes me, as a process eco-theologian, that emphasizing human rationality at the expense of everything else may likely have contributed to the state we’re in at the present.

However, Maxwell’s purview is ambitious – and he delivers!  What a must-buy book!

© 2017 Terry Biddington

The Revd Dr Terry Biddington FRSA, Dean of Chapel, University of Winchester