We are often told that we can’t solve our greatest problems today without thinking outside the box. But we are always creating boxes for ourselves, which confine our thought. We are engaged in creating (we hope) a peaceful world order, based on a flourishing globalized economy, on collective security and the rule of law. But…
I want to say first how deeply honoured I am to be chosen for the Templeton Prize. I believe that the goal Sir John Templeton has chosen is of the greatest contemporary importance and relevance: we have somehow to break down the barriers between our contemporary culture of science and disciplined academic study (what the…
November 5, 1931: Charles Margrave Taylor is born in Montréal, Canada, the youngest of three children (one brother, one sister) to Simone Beaubien, a dress designer, and Walter Margrave Taylor, a partner in a Montréal structural steel factory which he helped run. The home is bilingual and the children are brought up Catholic. It is…
The Explanation of Behavior. (Routledge and Paul Kegan, 1964)This was my doctoral dissertation. It was an all-out attack on psychological behaviorism, which tried to show that only muddled philosophical thinking could hide from its practitioners that their research program was reaching a dead-end. Hegel. (Cambridge University Press, 1975; various languages)This was an attempt to…