Â鶹´«Ã½

The Splendid Feast of Reason by S. Jonathan Singer, University of California
Press, £16.50/$24.95, ISBN 0520224256

JONATHAN SINGER despairs of reason. Nearing the end of a career teaching
biology at the University of California, San Diego, he reads that 93 per cent of
Americans say that they believe God created man. He concludes that only 7 per
cent believe in evolution. This says more about Singer than about the prevalence
of unreason, but it has inspired him to write The Splendid Feast of Reason.

The result is a hotchpotch and a ragbag. But such is the random nature of
cultural…