Nicholas Maxwell's provocative and highly-original philosophy of science urges a revolution in academic inquiry affecting all branches of learning, so that the single-minded pursuit of knowledge is replaced with the aim of helping people realize what is of value in life and make progress toward a more civilized world. This volume of essays from an international, interdisciplinary group of scholars engages Maxwell in critical evaluation and celebrates his contribution to philosophy spanning forty years. Several of the contributors, like Maxwell, took their inspiration from Sir Karl Popper's philosophy of science and were connected to the department he created at the London School of Economics. In the introductory chapter, Maxwell provides an overview of his thought and then defends his views against objections in a concluding essay.

Timothy Sprigge was one of the leading exponents of philosophical idealism in the last fifty years. His scholarly work in the history of modern philosophy focused on Baruch Spinoza, William James, Josiah Royce, George Santayana, F. H. Bradley, Arthur Schopenhauer, Edmund Husserl, and Alfred North Whitehead: this eventually led to the construction of his own original system of metaphysics he called 'panpsychistic absolute idealism'. Idealism, long unfashionable, has been coming back into favour, and Sprigge's work has found a new readership. This selection of his finest essays ranges widely over metaphysics, ethics, and the history of philosophy: all the themes that he discusses are drawn together in his unique philosophical system, based upon his original theory of the nature of consciousness.