Blite and Whack

Paul Seabright

• A Pocket Popper edited by David Miller
  Fontana, 479 pp, £4.95, August 1983, ISBN 0 00 636414 4
• The Postscript to the Logic of Scientific Discovery. Vol. I: Realism and the Aim of Science by Karl Popper, edited by W.W. Bartely
  Hutchinson, 420 pp, £20.00, March 1983, ISBN 0 09 151450 9
• The Philosophy of Popper by T.E. Burke
  Manchester, 222 pp, £16.00, July 1983, ISBN 0 7190 0904 9
• In Pursuit of Truth: Essays in Honour of Karl Popper’s 80th Birthday edited by Paul Levinson
  Harvester, 337 pp, £25.00, May 1983, ISBN 0 7108 0424 5
• Science and Moral Priority by Roger Sperry
  Blackwell, 135 pp, £12.50, February 1983, ISBN 0 631 13199 X
• Art, Science and Human Progress edited by R.B. McConnell
  Murray, 196 pp, £12.50, June 1983, ISBN 0 7195 4018 6

A year or two ago my eye was caught by the cover of a magazine on an American news-stand. It was a magazine for the working woman, and its title, in the best traditions of the me-generation, was Self. The cover advertised articles with titles like ‘The Problems of the Kept Man’ and ‘What if He Says No?’ But what attracted my attention was the rather Californian injunction flashed in bold letters across the top: ‘Let’s Be Real!’