Andrew Malcolm's Making Names, with its entertaining philosophical dialogues, is an interesting publishing event in itself even if we were not aware of the fact that this book made legal history when the Appeal Court ruled that Oxford University Press infringed the law when they reneged on their oral contract to publish it. Now we have the book, what's it about?
Malcolm, as his title forewarns us, deals with some modish issues of semiotics, but the overall contents are more comparable to some of Bertrand Russell's later writing, effectively communicating the essentials of philosophy and scientific theorising to students and general readers. Malcolm has used the literary device of two dramatic characters - Dr Effect and Professor Cause - who argue colloquially over some of the major areas of philosophical discourse: metaphysics, the relationship of body and mind, questions about the possibility of moral goodness, scientific models, and so on.
Dr Effect is a dedicated Oxbridge don in physics. Professor Cause, who initiates and sustains the dialogues, is a sceptic, joker and ironist. He's also an impostor, since at the end of the book we learn that he is not a professor of philosophy, but an odd job man. He has long since been kicked out of his PhD programme in logic and linguistics because of disagreements with his supervisor, but he continues to pursue his calling as a thinker and iconoclast.
The exchanges of dialogue between Cause and Effect begin when "Professor" Cause nearly runs his old sports car into Dr Effect. "Professor" Cause collars the shaken Dr Effect, offers him a drink and they're off into the day-long argument that comprises Making Names.
Some passages of the dialogues in Making Names consist of Effect acting as a responsive audience, while Cause fires off vigorous critiques and colloquial comments on the central ideas of Cause's admired hero Hume, and other major philosophers including J S Mill, Berkeley, and Descartes. In many other passages of the dialogues, Malcolm has created realistic direct arguments between Cause and Effect. Cause is relishing his chance, as a failed academic, to engage in a battle of wits with the academically successful Effect, whose mind is furnished with the current assumptions of a empirical scientist and liberal citizen.
In Malcolm's section of dialogue on the theme of freedom, Cause leads off with the old rhetorical question, "Are you a free agent?" Effect's diverse answers about what determines a person's actions are devised in order to allow the bogus professor to mimic and mock the successful science don, "...our family background, our education, our socio-economic system, our bla and our bla and our bla-bla-bla. Everything but free will!" The affronted scientist counter-punches below the would-be professorial mind: "Your worshipping of freedom is a sophisticated sort of virility complex."
The arguments between Malcolm's two characters touch extensively on some of the more prominent issues of the day - sexism, racism, the impact of scientific advances, and so on. But Malcolm doesn't conclude with any easy answers. The thrust of his main character Cause's arguments might irritate many readers as much as he irritates Effect, for example, in this exchange which touches on sexism:
"Effect: It's so... offensive. The word is woman or girl, not bird.But such arguments are left open. The reader is free to become involved in their dispute by providing further evidence from a woman's dictionary.
Cause: What prudery! The word is "bird". Look it up. "b-i-r-d', early Middle English for young maiden or girl... A poetic term a thousand years old, a term of endearment or desire, then as now.
The core dialogues in Making Names should prove to be a popular introductory text in public and college libraries, especially for students of philosophy, general studies, applied linguistics and English language teaching methods. Malcolm in fact wrote this book as a result of his teaching of further education classes in the Brighton area.
In any subsequent editions, Andrew Malcolm should consider two peripheral changes: the pruning of adjectives in the introductory descriptive passage, and a rigorous revision of the jog-trot verse in the end piece Electra play. If an abridged version of this 425-page book is published in paperback to cater to the tertiary student textbook market here or in America, it would need some annotations and an index.
All in all, however, the publishing of this well-printed, well-designed hardcover edition of Making Names is a credit to the author, his publisher AKME Publications and his independent supporters led by Professor emeritus Roy Edgley of Sussex University. Making Names is an original tour de force, it makes one look forward to Andrew Malcolm's future books, such as an autobiographical account of his seven-year ordeal in fighting a major legal battle against the management of Oxford University Press.
R W Noble is the author of various books and other publications in applied linguistics and English language teaching.
Click for the next item in the Malcolm v Oxford saga.
Return to Making Names' collated reviews.