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Raymond Tallis trained in medicine at Oxford University and at St Thomas' Hospital London before becoming Professor of Geriatric Medicine at the University of Manchester. He was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences for his research in clinical neuroscience and he has played a key role in developing guidelines for the care of stroke patients in the UK. From 2011 14 he was Chair of Healthcare Professionals for Assisted Dying. He retired from medicine in 2006 to become a full-time writer. His books have ranged across many subjects from philosophical anthropology to literary and cultural criticism but all are characterised by a fascination for the infinite complexity of human lives and the human condition. The Economist's Intelligent Life magazine lists him as one of the world's leading polymaths. His most recent book, on the subject of mortality, The Black Mirror (2015), was widely praised.
A book for anyone baffled by the world and our place in it. Tallis is an engaging guide through the fog. -- Tom McClelland, University of Warwick Raymond Tallis is one of the most thoughtful of self-confessed unbelievers. In a sequence of publications, he has demonstrated his grasp of complicated ideas, and his ability to communicate and criticise them with enviable clarity and even-handed good humour ... His aim is 'to remove some of the barriers to seeing the mystery of our capacity to make sense of things'. In this, he succeeds admirably ... Written for the general reader with 'a sub-philosophical frame of mind', this study will repay reading more than once - and then again. -- John Saxbee, Church Times Tallis calls for an end to the unfruitful antagonism perceived to exist between the human dimension of knowledge and the hard facts of objective reality. It is only by accepting the reality of both, and by paying more attention to the dynamic interplay between them, that we are able to make sense of things ... This book requires careful, thoughtful reading, and readers who already have some familiarity with the debate concerning knowledge will have an easier time. That said, it offers a substantial new direction in a pretty hot area of philosophy. In particular, Tallis's critiques of the extremes are well-considered. If this is in your area of interest, then this book is more than worth its purchase price. -- Philosophy Now Much of this elegant, self-deprecating and often witty book will give great pleasure to many theologians ... despite the occasional theological wince, I found much to relish here. An erudite tour through the history of ideas and knowing ... of great help to junior undergraduates ... and the literate reader intent on pursuing some of the murkier depths of epistemology. -- Michael Marsh, European Society for the Study of Science and Theology News & Reviews It only helps that [Tallis] is a polymath, not an academic philosopher. Formally trained in medicine, he is well informed about science, and thus not intimidated by it, as too may academic philosophers are. Not least among his other virtues is the unacademic elegance of his prose. -- Edward Feser, Times Literary Supplement
