PHILOSOPHER

A TRUE STORY OF LOVE AND WAR

By Andy Ross
A ROVER BOOK
Paperback, 15.6 cm x 23.4 cm, 496 pages
ISBN 978 146647993 7

Signed copies available on personal request
 

Andy Ross became a well trained philosopher but he kept asking why. It took him years to find out. As a baby boomer his soul was more seared than he expected by the wars of the twentieth century and their bitter aftermath in Britain. He found a way forward in a move to Germany and a new life of service to science and technology.

Gradually, over decades of patient work as well as failed love affairs and times of redemptive clarity, Andy worked out a set of answers to his questions that have universal scope and significance. He has forged a radical new philosophy. Its impact on his personal life has resulted in an often dramatic and finally moving human story.
 

Two Quotes

I was a boomer, a '49er. Among my cohort were the novelist Martin Amis and his journalist friend Christopher Hitchens. They were already at Oxford in '69, the year of Apollo and Woodstock, when I went up. Martin and I were both Exonians and we shared a joint on my matriculation day at Oxford. My rooming companion was a chap called Paul who was an old friend of Martin in a literati world of fabulous wealth and beautiful women. I was a humble physicist who thrilled to the drama of living in the glory of Apollo. Paul and Martin bade me shrug off my nerdy mantle and learn to be cool. Time enough later to find my way back to the chilly peaks of science from the hothouse world of sex and drugs and rock'n'roll.
(p. 3)

Along the way, to tune up my English, I read a few novels. In fact, the books did more to prime me for writing this memoir than to improve the Globorg book, so it may be helpful to say more. I started with a few translated volumes by the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami, which awakened fond memories of Japan. Then came Rebecca Goldstein's wise and witty crack at academics and Jews, 36 Arguments for the Existence of God. I had loved her novel poking fun at the Schock laureate logician Saul Kripke, and her book on Gödel's logical work, so this was a logico-philosophical treat. More relevant for this memoir was The Pregnant Widow by Martin Amis. This was his carefully crafted and thinly veiled autobiographical memoir of steamy sex with Gully Wells and others in the summer of 1970 — while I sweated in a steelworks. Also, I read Solar by Ian McEwan. This was good. After his novel Saturday about a neurosurgeon, Solar was a comic effort about a physicist. I could relate to that. But topping the lot for relevance to this memoir was Hitch-22 by Christopher Hitchens. The Hitch's autobiographical essay was a fine example of workmanlike prose in the service of a fascinating life story. It gave me the final push to undertake the pentathlon that gave birth to these words.
(pp. 473-474)
 

CONTENTS

Index of Names

This listing omits family and friends and others veiled by pseudonyms.

Abraham of Ur; Adams, Cliff; Adams, Douglas; Adams, William; Adjani, Isabelle; Adorno, Theodor; Agassi, Shai; Akkad, Moustapha; Albert, David Z.; Allende, Salvador; Althusser, Louis; Ambrose, Saint; Amis, Kingsley; Amis, Martin; Apotheker, Léo; Aquinas, Thomas; Aristophanes; Aristotle; Armatrading, Joan; Armstrong, Neil; Asimov, Isaac; Atmanspacher, Harald; Attenborough, David; Attenborough, Richard; Augustine of Hippo; Austin, J. L.; Ayer, Alfred J.; Aykroyd, Dan; Baars, Bernard; Bach, Johann Sebastian; Baden-Powell, Robert; Baeyer, Hans Christian von; Baillie, J. B.; Baker, Gordon; Balfour, Julian; Barger, Sonny; Bar-Hillel, Yehoshua; Barnhart, Bruno; Barwise, Jon; Basinger, Kim; Bauer, Barbara; Bauer, Friedrich L.; Beals, Jennifer; Beatty, Warren; Beauvoir, Simone de; Becker, Boris; Bednorz, J. Georg; Beethoven, Ludwig van; Beiglböck, Wolf; Bell, John; Bell, T. C.; Bellow, Saul; Bentine, Michael; Berg, Yehuda; Bergen, Axel von; Bergman, Ingrid; Berkeley, George; Berlin, Isaiah; Bernays, Paul; Berners-Lee, Tim; Bernini, G. L.; Berry, Michael; Bester, Alfred; Beuys, Joseph; Bhutto, Benazir; Bidwell, Syd; Birkin, Jane; Blackmore, Susan; Blair, Tony; Blake, William; Blamey, Stephen; Bloom, Harold; Boccaccio, Giovanni; Bogart, Humphrey; Bohm, David; Bohnenkamp, Hajo; Bohr, Niels; Bolc, Leonard; Boole, George; Boorstin, Daniel J.; Born, Max; Borowik, Piotr; Bostock, David; Bostock, L.; Boulay, Shirley du; Bourgeois, Jean Pierre; Bowie, David; Boyer, Pascal; Bradbury, Ray; Bradley, F. H.; Brando, Marlon; Braun, Wernher von; Brezhnev, Leonid; Bridges, Jeff; Briggs, Raymond; Brockman, John; Brodie, Alex; Brooks, Elkie; Brouwer, L. E. J.; Brown, Lancelot; Brown, Tina; Buber, Martin; Buchan, James; Burroughs, William; Burton, Richard; Bush, George H. W.; Bush, George W.; Byrne, Catriona; Caine, Michael; Cairncross, Frances; Caligula, Gaius Germanicus; Callaghan, James; Camejo, Silvia Arroyo; Cameron, David; Cameron, James; Camm, Sydney; Campbell, Naomi; Cantor, Georg; Capra, Fritjof; Carnap, Rudolf; Carré, John le; Casey, Richard; Castaneda, Carlos; Chadwick, Roy; Chalmers, David; Chamberlain, Neville; Chamberlain, Richard; Chandler, F. S.; Chardin, Teilhard de; Charles I, King; Charles, Prince of Wales; Chaucer, Geoffrey; Cheney, Richard; Cher (singer); Chernenko, Konstantin; Chopin, Frédéric F.; Chopra, Deepak; Church, Alonzo; Churchill, John; Churchill, Winston; Clancy, Tom; Clark, Gordon; Clarke, Arthur C.; Clavell, James; Clayderman, Richard; Clinton, William J.; Cohen, Clive; Cohen, Leonard; Cohen, Paul; Coleman, James A.; Coleridge, Samuel Taylor; Collins, Phil; Conrad, Joseph; Conway, John; Cooper, Frank; Coppola, Francis Ford; Coppola, Sofia; Cotterill, Rodney; Cotton, Billy; Craig, Edward; Craig, Gordon A.; Crichton, Michael; Crick, Francis; Crompton, Richmal; Cromwell, Oliver; Crowe, Russell; Crowther-Hunt, Norman; Cruise, Tom; Cummings, E. E.; Curtis, Graham; Curtis, Richard; Cutler, Ivor; Dalai Lama; Dalen, Dirk Van; Daltrey, Roger; Damasio, Antonio; Damon, Matt; Daniel, Hans-Ulrich; Dante Alighieri; Darwin, Charles; Davidson, Donald; Davies, Andy; Davis, Philip J.; Dawkins, Richard; Dennett, Daniel; Depardieu, Gérard; Derbyshire, John; Dern, Laura; Descartes, René; Deutsch, David; Diana, Princess of Wales; DiCaprio, Leonardo; Dick, Philip K.; Dickens, Charles; Dimont, Max; Dirac, Paul; Dolev, S.; Donovan P. Leitsch; Dostoyevsky, F.; Douglas, Kirk; Drake, Frank R.; Duffy (singer); Dummett, Michael; Duncan, Tom; Dylan, Bob; Dyson, Freeman; Dyson, George; Eastwood, Clint; Edelman, David; Edelman, Gerald; Einstein, Albert; Eliot, T. S.; Elitzur, A.; Elizabeth II, Queen; Eltis, Walter; Emmerich, Roland; Endo, Shusaku; Engels, Friedrich; Eno, Brian; Erhard, Werner; Escher, M. C.; Evans, Gareth; Everett III, Hugh; Eysenck, Hans J.; Falconer, Helen; Faraday, Michael; Farleigh, Peter; Fassbinder, Rainer Werner; Fawcett, Farrah; Feferman, Anita Burdman; Feferman, Solomon; Feinberg, Todd; Fenton, James; Ferguson, Niall; Ferry, Brian; Feynman, Richard; Firestone, Shulamith; Flack, Roberta; Flockhart, Calista; Fontane, Theodor; Ford, Gerald; Ford, Harrison; Foster, Jodie; Foster, Norman; Fox, Michael J.; Fraenkel, Abraham; Franklin, Aretha; Franklin, Pete; Frederick the Great; Fredman, Sandra; Freeman, Anthony; Freeman, Howard; Frege, Gottlob; Freud, Sigmund; Friedman, Louis; Frinton, Freddie; Gadamer, Hans-Georg; Gagarin, Yuri; Gainsbourg, Serge; Galbraith, John Kenneth; Galland, Adolf; Gandhi, Mohandas K.; Gandy, Robin; Gardner, Martin; Garfunkel, Art; Gates, Bill; Geldof, Bob; Gentzen, Gerhard; George VI, King; Gernreich, Rudi; Gibran, Kahlil; Gibson, Mel; Gilbert, Martin; Gillies, Donald; Gleick, James; Glover, Jonathan; Gödel, Kurt; Goebbels, Josef; Goering, Hermann; Goldblum, Jeff; Goldstein, Rebecca; Gorbachev, Mikhail; Gordon, Giles; Gore, Al; Götze, Heinz; Grant, Hugh; Grayling, A. C.; Green, John; Greene, Brian; Greenfield, Susan; Greer, Germaine; Gribbin, John; Griffiths, Bede; Gromyko, Andrei; Guth, Alan; Habermas, Jürgen; Hacker, Peter; Hagan, Scott; Haken, Hermann; Hameroff, Stuart; Hanks, Tom; Hardcastle, Sarah; Hardy, Thomas; Harris, Arthur; Harris, Sam; Harrison, George; Hart, Bill; Harvey, Andrew; Hastings, Max; Hatton, Joe; Hauser, Kaspar; Hawking, Stephen; Haynes, John-Dylan; Healey, Dennis; Heath, Edward; Hefter, Ernst; Hegel, G. W. F.; Heidegger, Martin; Heine, Heinrich; Heinlein, Robert; Heinze, Joachim; Heisenberg, Werner; Heller, Joseph; Hendrix, Jimi; Henry IV, King; Hersh, Reuben; Herzog, Werner; Hesse, Hermann; Heym, Stefan; Higgs, Peter; Hilbert, David; Hiley, Basil; Hill, Gerhard; Hirohito, Emperor; Hitchens, Christopher; Hitler, Adolf; Hobbes, Thomas; Hodge, Joanna; Hoffman, Dustin; Hofstadter, Douglas; Honda, Soichiro; Honderich, Ted; Hoyle, Fred; Hughes, Howard; Hume, David; Hussein, Saddam; Husserl, Edmund; Inwood, Michael; Irving, David; Isaacson, Daniel; Ishiguro, Hidé; Issigonis, Alec; Iveson, Tony; Jackson, Michael; Jagger, Mick; Jarratt, Alex; Jaspers, Karl; Jaynes, Julian; Jenkins, Clive; Jenkins, Roy; Jesus of Nazareth; Joel, Billy; John Paul II, Pope; John, Elton; Johns, W. E.; Johnson, J. E.; Johnson, Lyndon B.; Joyce, James; Julius Caesar; Jung, C. G.; Jürgens, Hartmut; Kagermann, Henning; Kahn, Herman; Kaku, Michio; Kamp, Hans; Kant, Immanuel; Kaufmann, Walter; Kavanagh, Patricia; Kawabata, Yasunari; Keitel, Harvey; Kemp-Smith, Norman; Kennedy, John F.; Kershaw, Ian; Keyes, Daniel; Keynes, John Maynard; Khomeini, Ruhollah; Khrushchev, Nikita; Kickuth, Rolf; Kidder, Tracy; Kidman, Nicole; Kiefer, Anselm; King, Stephen; Kinnock, Neil; Kinski, Klaus; Kinski, Nastassja; Kircher, Carina; Kirwan, Christopher; Kissinger, Henry; Klimov, Elem; Kling, Janie; Klitzing, Klaus von; Knuth, Donald E.; Koch, Christof; Koestler, Arthur; Kohl, Helmut; Kojève, Alexandre; Kolakowski, Leszek; Kolenda, N.; Koresh, David; Körner, Stefan; Kravtsov, Yurii A.; Krawczyk-Wasilewska, Violetta; Kripke, Saul; Kubrick, Stanley; Kuhn, Thomas; Kunii, Tosiyasu L.; Kurosawa, Akira; Kurzweil, Ray; Lahee, Angela; Lakatos, Imre; Lao Tzu; Larkin, Philip; Laurikainen, K. V.; Lawrence, D. H.; Lawrence, T. E.; Lean, David; Leary, Timothy; Lederman, Leon; LeDoux, Joseph; Legler, Thomas; Lehner, Wolfgang; Leibnitz, Gottfried; Lemmon, E. J.; Lenin, V. I.; Lennon, John; Levy, Azriel; Lewerich, Bernhard; Lewinsky, Monica; Lewis, C. S.; Lewis, David; Lindley, David; Lippisch, Alexander; Lisi, Garrett; Llinás, Rodolfo R.; Lloyd, Christopher; Locke, John; Lockwood, Michael; Lodge, David; Lotsch, Helmut; Lucas, John; Lukacs, Georg; Luther, Martin; Lynch, David; Lynn, Vera; Mach, Ernst; Macmillan, Harold; Madonna (singer); Madsen, Truman G.; Magdalene, Mary; Maharishi Mahesh Yogi; Mailer, Norman; Major, John; Malloy, Jim; Manchester, William; Mandelbrot, Benoit; Manilow, Barry; Mankell, Henning; Mann, Thomas; Mao Zedong; Marcus Aurelius; Marcuse, Herbert; Markram, Henry; Martin, Steve; Marx, Karl; Mason, James; Matsubara, Hisako; Maxwell, James Clerk; Maxwell, Neil A.; May, Brian; McArthur, Douglas; McCain, John; McCartney, Paul; McCrum, Robert; McDermott, Drew; McDowell, Andie; McDowell, John; McEwan, Ian; McFadden, Johnjoe; McGillis, Kelly; McGinn, Colin; McGinn, Marie; McKenzie, Scott; McQueen, Steve; Meacham, Jon; Melville, Herman; Mercury, Freddie; Meridius, Maximus Decimus; Metzinger, Thomas; Michael, George; Michelangelo Buonarroti; Michelmore, Cliff; Mill, John Stuart; Miller, Malcolm; Miller, Stanley; Milligan, Spike; Mishima, Yukio; Mitchell, Reginald; Moffat, A.; Monsarrat, Nicholas; Montague of Beaulieu; Montague, Richard; Montand, Yves; Montgomery, Bernard; More, Kenneth; Morgan, Elaine; Morris, Jan; Moses (prophet); Moss, Stirling; Mountbatten, Louis; Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus; Muhamed (prophet); Mukhopadhyay, A. K.; Müller, Karl Alexander; Müller, Werner; Mulley, Fred; Mullis, Kary; Muncaster, Roger; Murakami, Haruki; Murasaki Shikibu; Murdoch, Iris; Murray, Bill; Mussolini, Benito; Myhrvold, Nathan; Nabokov, Vladimir; Nagel, Thomas; Napoleon Bonaparte; Nash, John; Nehru, Pandit; Nelson, Horatio; Neumann, John von; Newton, Isaac; Newton-John, Olivia; Nichols, Mike; Nico (Christa Päffgen); Nietzsche, Friedrich; Nixon, Richard M.; Nowarra, Heinz J.; Nunn, Chris; Obama, Barack; Omnès, Roland; Orbison, Roy; Orwell, George; Otter, Charlotte; Owen, David; Pascal, Blaise; Pasolini, Pier Paolo; Pasquini, Claude; Paul VI, Pope; Pauli, Wolfgang; Peitgen, Heinz-Otto; Penrose, Roger; Peres, Shimon; Perry, Katy; Perry, Matthew; Pfeiffer, Michelle; Phillips, Todd; Pickett, Wilson; Piekalkiewicz, Janusz; Pinkard, Terry; Pinochet, Augusto; Piper, Arthur; Pirsig, Robert; Planck, Max; Plant, Robert; Plato; Plattner, Hasso; Pohl, Frederick; Polanski, Roman; Popper, Karl; Porsche, Ferdinand; Presley, Elvis; Price, Huw; Pullman, Philip; Putnam, Hilary; Pylkkanen, Paavo; Quincey, Christian de; Quine, W. V. O.; Quinn, Daniel; Quinn, Sally; Rabin, Michael; Rachmaninoff, Sergei; Ramachandran, Vilayanur; Randall, Lisa; Ransome, Arthur; Ratzinger, Joseph; Reagan, Ronald; Redgrave, Michael; Reed, John; Rees-Mogg, William; Reeves, Keanu; Regis, Ed; Reich, Wilhelm; Reischauer, Edwin O.; Richard, Cliff; Richter, Peter; Riemann, Bernhard; Rigg, Diana; Ringo Starr; Ringwald, Molly; Roaf, Dermot; Robbins, Harold; Robert, J. M.; Roberts, Julia; Robinson, Abraham; Robinson, Joan; Roe, Edwin Alliott Verdon; Rommel, Erwin; Ronstadt, Linda; Roosevelt, Franklin; Root, Wells; Rosen, Howard; Rosendorfer, Herbert; Rosenthal, David; Ross, Diana; Ross, James; Ross, John; Rossetti, Dante Gabriel; Rossum, Guido van; Roth, Philip; Rotten, Johnny; Rucker, Rudy; Rumi (poet); Rumsfeld, Donald; Rushdie, Salman; Russell, Bertrand; Russell, Charles; Russell, Jane; Russell, Ken; Russell, Peter; Ruvo, Rebecca de; Ryan, Cornelius; Ryan, Meg; Sacks, Oliver; Safranski, Rüdiger; Sagan, Carl; Sakamoto, Ryuichi; Sampson, Anthony; Sanders, Victoria; Sanfey, John; Sartre, Jean-Paul; Saupe, Dietmar; Savage, Marshall T.; Schachter, Daniel; Schawlow, Arthur; Scheer, August-Wilhelm; Schevardnadze, Eduard; Schiller, Friedrich; Schlink, Bernhard; Schmidt, Helmut; Schmidt-Volkmar, Pascal; Schopenhauer, Arthur; Schrödinger, Erwin; Schwartz, Melvin; Schwarzenegger, Arnold; Schwinger, Julian; Sciama, Dennis; Scott Fitzgerald, F.; Scott, Alwyn; Scott, Dana; Scott, Ridley; Scruton, Roger; Secombe, Harry; Sedgwick-Jell, Simon; Seidensticker, Edward G.; Sellers, Peter; Seymour, Mark; Seymour, Paul; Shakespeare, William; Shams of Tabriz; Shankar, Ravi (musician); Shankar, Ravi (physicist); Sheen, Martin; Sherman, Barrie; Shirer, William L.; Siddharta Gautama (Buddha); Sikka, Vishal; Silverstone, Alicia; Simon, Neil; Singer, Wolf; Skolem, Thoralf; Slomson, A. B.; Smith, Joseph; Smolin, Lee; Smoot, George; Snowdon, Paul; Socrates; Solomon, Neil; Spector, Phil; Spengler, Oswald; Spielberg, Steven; Springer, Julius; Springfield, Dusty; Stalin, Josef; Stapp, Henry; Stauffenberg, Claus Schenk Graf von; Steel, David; Stein, Sherman K.; Steinberger, Jack; Steiner, George; Stewart, Al; Stewart, Ian; Sting (Gordon Sumner); Stockhausen, Karlheinz; Stoppard, Tom; Strawson, Galen; Strawson, Peter; Summer, Donna; Sutherland, Keith; Sweetman, Bill; Swinburne, Richard; Takahashi, Yukihiro; Tanizaki, Junichiro; Tarski, Alfred; Tart, Charles; Taylor, Charles; Taylor, Gabriele; Tchaikovsky, P. I.; Templeton, Hugh; Templeton, John; Templeton, Paul; Templeton, Peter; Thaikattil, Soja John; Thatcher, Margaret; Theunissen, Petra; Thiel, Christian; Thiering, Barbara; Thompson, Hunter S.; Tito, Josip Broz; Tokugawa Ieyasu; Tolkien, J. R. R.; Tolstoy, Leo; Tomonaga, Sin-Itiro; Tononi, Giulio; Townshend, Pete; Trainer, Jennifer; Travolta, John; Trump, Donald; Truss, John; Turing, Alan; Turner, Ike; Turner, Ted; Turner, Tina; Tuszynski, Jack; Tye, Michael; Tzuke, Judie; Updike, John; Ure, Midge; Urey, Harold; Van Gogh, Vincent; Van Vogt, A.E.; Velmans, Max; Verhoeven, Paul; Vicious, Sid; Vilenkin, Alex; Vincent, Gene; Vogel, Ezra; Vonnegut, Kurt; Wall, Josephine; Wallis, Barnes; Warhol, Andy; Warwick, Dionne; Watkins, John; Watson, James D.; Weaver, Sigourney; Weber, Beate; Wegner, Daniel; Weinberg, Steven; Weinstein, Bill; Wells, Gully; Wheare, Kenneth; White, Patrick; White, Stephen; Whitehead, Alfred North; Wiesel, Elie; Wiggins, David; Wigner, Eugene; Williams, Bernard; Wilmot, Chester; Wilson, Andy; Wilson, Harold; Winehouse, Amy; Winslet, Kate; Witten, Edward; Witten, I. H.; Wittgenstein, Ludwig; Woessner, Hans; Wohlfahrt, Harald; Wolf, Christian; Wolf, Fred Alan; Wolfe, Tom; Wolff, Nancy; Wolfram, Stephen; Wonder, Stevie; Wright, Crispin; Wyndham, John; Xavier, Francis; Yalom, Irvin D.; Yoko Ono; Young, Shinzen; Yourgrau, Palle; Zappa, Frank; Zeh, H.-Dieter; Zemeckis, Robert; Zencke, Peter; Zentner, Christian; Zermelo, Ernst; Zukav, Gary; Zuse, Konrad; Zwiebach, Barton

Index as PDF document (9 pages, 252 KB)