It is difficult to classify this book. In the introduction, followed by 25 chapters, we are offered a confident account of the origin of our cosmos to the present day, blending together contemporary cosmology, astrophysics, biology, assumptions about animal cognition and behavior, and more. Matson then moves to the birth of agriculture, human language, and early human reflection on the nature of reality. The text then shifts to a rapid-fire treatment of Greek philosophy, a lamentation over the philosophical ills of Judeo-Christianity, and ends with a rough ride in which we encounter modern philosophical heroes (Spinoza, Hobbes) and villains (Descartes). Along the way there are autocratic claims like ‘There are no such things as natural rights’ (158) and ‘Christianity…is intellectually defunct’ (189). There are multiple claims that begin with ‘It is an incontrovertible fact that…’ (200–201). Rather than trying to retell Matson's broad ‘history’ in detail, my aim will be to extract and comment on what is philosophically interesting in this undertaking.

Judging from the Introduction, Matson wants to advance something like the old project of logical positivism of distinguishing proper, meaningful beliefs – beliefs that turn out to be (roughly) scientific – from non-scientific beliefs that are suspect and are either ungrounded or are the result of an over-active imagination.

In chapters 2 to 5, we move from the Big Bang to the emergence of planets, plants, and animals, including human animals. The idea of ‘low beliefs’ is introduced to account for how humans cope and (and survive) in their immediate surroundings. Matson also introduces the concept of a ‘high belief’ or belief learned through testimony. For example, those who have experienced the burning effect of fire ‘warn their fellows who have not yet personally been burned but who heed them and thereby acquire high beliefs that fire burns’ (43). Matson then notes how high beliefs are often (but not always) the result of imaginative narration involving the supernatural and the prophetic. Safety from such mythic high beliefs comes from the emergence of science with Thales where we find some of the core elements of modern science (monism, naturalism, and rationalism). I cite Matson at some length on Thales so that you can see how Matson ‘tames’ or interprets Thales' apparently quasi-theistic (or polytheistic) comment about the gods, and presents Thales as a fairly familiar secular naturalist who embraces reductionism and determinism.

Matson's overall plan seems to be to cast those of us who have low beliefs as proto-verificationists or positivists, testing these beliefs as we (in Matson's phrase) ‘rub against reality’ (208). In a useful glossary, he defines this term as follows:

By Matson's lights, Thales' beliefs rubbed up rather well against reality, thereby initiating the first naturalistic, positivist movement.

Did Thales'beliefs rub up against reality and initiate positivistic science? First, in what respect is Thales' outlook scientific? We have no reason to think that his reasoning was based on hypotheses and repeatable experiments. To what extent are the above theses based on ‘low beliefs’? Against 1, it seems just as reasonable to suppose that it is a commonplace low belief that there are many different kinds of things. It would seem more natural to refer to what Thales is doing is what used to be called ‘natural philosophy’ or perhaps even metaphysics. The characterization of naturalism as the view that ‘The All’ (and what is the All?) ‘contains within itself its driving forces’ seems very odd. If the ‘All’ means all of reality, it would seem that most classical theists would agree. And the idea that everything occurs necessarily seems to run into what is surely a ‘low belief’, namely that (some of us think that) we have free choices that are not fixed by nature or by gods. In fact, ancient Greek history and theatre give us abundant evidence that, at least for some in the Greek world, there is a great sense of contingency as opposed to foreordained action. It is difficult to read Heroditus, Thucydides, Aeschylus, Sophacles, and Euripides and think that all outcomes in war, love, and struggle are fixed. Yes, there are oracles and Oedipus does meet his well known, awful fate, but even in Oedipus Tyrannus, one can hope that Oedipus might heed the advice of Tiresias and not set in motion the inquiry that will expose him as the killer of his father and the son of Jocasta, his wife? Even in Homer, it seems evident that Achilles can choose glory and death if he remains at Troy, or he can have his homecoming and die without glory. This certainly appears to be presented to him as a real choice, not something necessary.

Matson's narrative moves on to other ‘scientists’, such as Anaximander, and Anaximenes, until we get to Socrates (who proves disappointing) and then recovers the scientific narrative with the atomism of Democritus and Epicurus. Aristotle is hailed as ‘the greatest scientist of all times’. Disaster strikes, however, with the advent of Christianity. Plato was bad enough (who brought about ‘the invention of theology, not a science but a mimicry of one’) but with Christianity we get the Omnipotent Creator and Legislator (which Matson abbreviates as OCL), the possibility of the miraculous (which, for Matson, would involve the violation of necessary laws of nature) and authoritative revelation (the Bible). Matson writes of Christianity's innovations:

1. 1. that anything imaginable can happen, should the Omnipotent Creator and Legislator (henceforth OCL) see fit to make it happen, therefore no informative statement about the world can be a necessary truth; and

2. 2. that the regular behaviors of things are to be conceived and explained in terms of obedience to laws decreed by the OCL. (136)

Elsewhere Matson states Christianity's role in expanding the notion of the possible in these terms:

Matson also observes:

This notion leads to all sorts of philosophical wreckage, such as Descartes' argument for skepticism based on the imaginability of an all-powerful, malignant demon and Hume's problem of induction. On Descartes:

On Hume:

What are we to make of these claims? One might note that Aristotle recognized possible states of affairs that do not obtain (this is what Aristotle thought to be the advantage of theatre over history), he certainly recognized that which is metaphysically impossible (which is why he recommends the playwright to choose plausible impossibilities, rather than implausible possibilities), and Matson might have given more credit to Muslim philosophers in developing the notion of a contingent cosmos over against a sovereign, necessarily existing God, rather than seeing this as all a matter of Christianity. (More on Jewish philosophy might also be welcome.) It might also be noted that many classical Christian theists did not think God can do evil and so not every logical possibility is something that God can bring about (Boethius, Augustine, Aquinas, and so on). But what philosophical reasons are there for thinking that the following epistemic principle relies on the truth or even the possibility or the very idea of theism: ‘Whatever state of affairs can be conceived to exist and be consistently described is possible’? I know of no reason whatever, and Matson provides none. He makes a historical claim (which I doubt) but even if he makes his claim historically – no one accepted that thesis about possibilities prior to the rise of theism – why suppose that there is a necessary connection? The atheist David Lewis believed that there were many different laws of nature and such; surely Lewis was not a closet theist nor does theism enter into any arguments for his modal realism. The atheist Bertrand Russell struggled mightily with the problem of induction and nowhere appeals to the supernatural or the possibility of or even the idea of God.

It must be further entertained that if the above epistemic thesis about possible states of affairs that may or may not obtain did rest on theism, Matson may have identified a new theistic argument, e.g. Pegasus is imaginable and therefore possible. This line of reasoning seems right, but if Pegasus is possible and not impossible, then theism is true. Therefore it seems theism is true. Obviously, I am not endorsing this line of reasoning, but the plausibility of believing in properties or states of affairs that are possible but are not instantiated or do not obtain is substantial and if such plausibility entails or somehow only makes sense in a non-naturalistic, theistic frame of reference, then theists may well be cheered by the outcome.

There are many more assertions than arguments in this book, and little effort to consider rejoinders to the claims at hand. In a discussion of Hobbes, there is no room to consider the change by his contemporaries, the Cambridge Platonists, that Hobbes wound up denying the existence of consciousness. On this point, and perhaps only on this point, one of the key advocates of positivism in the 20^th century, A.J. Ayer, would have been firmly with the Cambridge Platonists vis-à-vis Hobbes.

What is to be made of Matson's charge that Christianity's introduction of scripture and revelation impeded progress in philosophy? Granted, from the standpoint of current secular naturalism, such revelation claims impede philosophical progress. But imagine that it is possible that there is a God who is revealed in and through human history. Would not a wise person consider the merits of such ostensible revelation? To offer a mundane analogy, ignoring them would be like studying animals such as chimps, dolphins, or dogs and not consider whether they might be trying to communicate something to us. Perhaps Newton would have been an even greater scientist if he was not fascinated with Biblical revelation, and maybe Locke would have been a better philosopher if he had spent more time on his epistemology if he had not worried about the Trinity or written on the reasonableness of Christianity. But then again, perhaps this interest in revelation by Newton and Locke represented a capacious, truly philosophical mind-set. Arguably, they both loved wisdom, and if wisdom might be found in divinely revealed precepts and narratives, why should they not explore such texts with the intensity that they did.

Grand Theories and Everyday Beliefs is an engaging, polemical text, not out of step with older accounts of the history of thought one finds in, say, Auguste Comte, in which science rises (or should rise) in triumph over superstitious religions.