Presents a collection of essays which offer applied philosophy and analyses of vital issues about science, society, religion, law, literature, and also what makes a life meaningful.

This wide-ranging collection of Susan Haack's new and recent essays offers applied philosophy in a new key and a fresh voice - subtle, penetrating analyses of vital issues about science, society, religion, law, literature, even about what makes a life meaningful. Is truth one, or many - or both? Or could it be just an illusion? Are science and religion compatible? Does science itself require a kind of faith? Is consistency intellectually indispensable, or merely "the hobgoblin of little minds"? How does truth relate to justice, and how can courts best handle the scientific testimony often vital to a case? Is economics the "queen of the social sciences", or are its scientific pretensions largely bogus? Is philosophy itself a science, or is it more akin to literature? How can we learn so much about life from fiction, when the stories novelists tell are not true? Whether she is telling the "sad, sleazy saga" of a drug company's efforts to suppress the unfavourable results of a clinical trial it had funded, disentangling the many senses of "coherent", or reflecting on the growth of intellectual character, Haack writes with the clarity, verve, and wit her readers have come to expect.