Lawrence B. Slobodkin is Professor of Biology at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. He is also a research scientist and past president of the American Society of Naturalists and the General Systems Research Society.

This is a timely book. In an age of specialization—a tendency that bewilders most citizens, and in the long run threatens intellectual activity in our civilization—Slobodkin is able to write about the connections between science, art, games, and dining in an important and entertaining way. I think it will be a classic.

• The Opening 1. Sense, Sensibility, and Self: The Peculiar Humanity of Stories 2. Simplifying Religious Revolutions: The Birth of Doctrine 3. The Great Intellectual Playing Field: In Praise of Games 4. Three Dinner Parties 5. A Matter of Taste: Minimalism and the World of Art 6. To Science Is Human: Factual Pleasures 7. Explaining the Whole Universe: Motion, Velocity, and Direction 8. Explaining the Rest of the Universe: Darwinian Insight 9. Virtue and the Simple Life 10. Masters of Reality Closure Notes Acknowledgments Index

Lawrence B. Slobodkin is Professor of Biology at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. He is also a research scientist and past president of the American Society of Naturalists and the General Systems Research Society.

This is a timely book. In an age of specialization—a tendency that bewilders most citizens, and in the long run threatens intellectual activity in our civilization—Slobodkin is able to write about the connections between science, art, games, and dining in an important and entertaining way. I think it will be a classic.

• The Opening 1. Sense, Sensibility, and Self: The Peculiar Humanity of Stories 2. Simplifying Religious Revolutions: The Birth of Doctrine 3. The Great Intellectual Playing Field: In Praise of Games 4. Three Dinner Parties 5. A Matter of Taste: Minimalism and the World of Art 6. To Science Is Human: Factual Pleasures 7. Explaining the Whole Universe: Motion, Velocity, and Direction 8. Explaining the Rest of the Universe: Darwinian Insight 9. Virtue and the Simple Life 10. Masters of Reality Closure Notes Acknowledgments Index