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Interview

Raymond Tallis

Our columnist has just released a major book on the philosophy of time. Grant Bartley interviews him about Of Time and Lamentation.

Lovely to see you Professor Tallis, to talk about your new magnum opus, Of Time and Lamentation. What were your motivations for writing this book?

Well, it’s part of a much bigger project. As a secular humanist, I feel I’ve managed to liberate myself from supernatural accounts of humanity, but the alternative for many people is a naturalistic account – the idea that we’re just ‘pieces of nature’. One aspect of that is the notion that the natural sciences are ultimately going to give us a complete account, not only of the rest of the universe, but of ourselves in it. It’s this scientism that has been one of my targets over many years, and it’s one of the drivers for writing this book about time.

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