For technical reasons a different painting of Turner is shown here on the website from the one printed in the Bulletin. St.Vincent's Tower, Naples

Our meetings, I'm pleased to say, have been interesting and on the whole well attended. Thanks are due to our organisers. I hope they will be even better supported this year. Please make a special note of the June meeting when we have a visit from John McDonnell, MP for Hayes and Harlington. His subject will deal with peace and humanism. Our regular monthly meetings, arranged by John Bennett, have been much enjoyed by those taking part. They follow the Coffee Mornings on the second Saturday of each month, and look at places of literary or historical merit. I like to think we have a core membership of some 15 people who can be relied upon to be present at our regular monthly meetings at the Friends' Meeting House on the last Thursday of the month at 7.30 pm, whatever the subject. They try to make it and let us know if they cannot.

I think we have done well to devote this month to the nature and implications of humanism. Let us make sure that we proceed with discussion and not argument. Humanism is such a simple and sensible philosophy that we have really nothing to quarrel about. This contrasts with religion, which is divisive and has in the past been responsible for such horrors as inquisitions and witch-hunts. But for the restraints of the secular authorities similar activities would happen today. They actually do in Muslim countries, where no distinction is made between secular and sacred, and the judiciary is often composed of fundamentalists.

Disagreement among humanists takes place only when conduct is introduced. Humanists are united on the nature of man, but not on how people should behave. But one of the important side effects of humanism is universal friendship, unlike religion, of which the side effects are enmity and holy war.

The end of the year was important for our pagan ancestors. Lacking central heating and the other modern amenities, they valued good weather for themselves and their crops. Their festivals were important to them. Let us also take pleasure in the prospect of spring and not in the birth of an imaginary god.

Although BHA humanists and many other people in the West often use the expression Enlightenment I am not sure that all are prepared to give a comprehensive definition. Here is one that I have assembled from the Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy.

"The Enlightenment is at once a style, an attitude, secular, sceptical and practical. The Enlightenment belief in human rationality has several aspects: (1)Human beings are free to the extent that their activities are carried out for a reason. Actions prompted by traditional authority, whether political or not are not free. (2)Human rationality is universal, requiring only education for its development. In virtue of their common rationality, all human beings have certain rights, among them the right to choose and shape their individual destinies. (3)The true forms of all things could be discovered, whether of the universe, of the mind, of a happy life or of beautiful architecture."

I take it that you would not agree with the above but also regard it representing the very foundations on which Western democratic liberal civilised values rest.

You may be aware that everything I have just described is rejected by people variously calling themselves relativists, post-modernists or social constructionists. More specifically they deny that Enlightenment beliefs and values have any real existence. They deny existentialism (that humans have a unique personal priority over appearences), realism, foundationalism, transcendental standpoints, knowledge as accurate representation, truth as correspondence to reality, principles, distinctions and descriptions unconditionally binding for all times, persons and places, neutrality and the sovereignty of reason and the notion of the autonomous rational essentialist inividuals. All these are dismissed unconditionally by post-modernists.

The consequence of post-modernist 'belief' is a refection of unity, homogeneity, totality, closure and identity; the rejection of the pursuit and the rest. Everything is relative - 'judgement', 'worth' and merit in aesthetics, 'rights', 'freedom' and 'duty' in ethics and 'truth', 'verification' and 'objectivity' in epistemology.

For want of a better word, shall we agree to refer to this celebration of relativism as 'anti-Enlightenment' and can we moreover agree that you and I and like-minded liberals should resist it wherever it is promoted?

I don't think we need be distracted by the fact that some people use the terms humanism and-antihumanism to refer to these opposed points of view.

Much discussion - argument, if you will - has taken place between the lumpers and the splitters, so called, in many areas of life.

Our President is clearly a lumper when he implies, in his article above, that all humanists are agreed about essentials (psychology-deficient biology, unfortunate to some) and that anything else (such as human conduct) can be safely left out of discussion. In his letter (see above) Derek Hill emphasises the split he sees between humanists and those philosophers who in the past have claimed to be anti-humanists. Where a split between atheist and agnostic is concerned he (in the name of tolerance and tradition) is a lumper. Both these contributions were submitted for the Bulletin by the President but it appears the one by Derek he found unworthy of note. That would not be the view of some others of us Ealing Humanists who see inadequacies in both essence and tolerance views when separated from each other.

Derek's olive branch seems to deserve due acknowledgement and perhaps the response of a common terminology as he suggests. But need we be so concerned about a split in views on anti-humanism when we can usefully discuss, and have a go at lumping, the varieties of Ealing humanism?

This is the conclusion one might, with ready justification, draw from a report (Dissecting Postmodernism) of last month's Bulletin - and the letter above. It seems inescapable too if one 'dissects' the new book by Professor Dupré (that I attempt to adequately review in the book review below). Since a general futility and the occasional utility depend on processes of selection to which ideas become submitted, these processes are compared in a, hopefully explanatory, diagram overpage. (Regretfully this diagram cannot be shown on this website.)

Obviously the writer, Professor of Philosophy of Science at Exeter University, has produced a model of clear thinking (although oddly his book is by no means easy reading) and provides us with a good dozen memorable phrases (that I felt simply must be quoted, see article below). In company with Richard Dawkins however John Dupré clearly deserts the cause of correctly representing science to the general public.

He claims early on (his page 5) that philosophers, primarily, provide the scepticism which 'science' displays. Then he adds, next page, that "Another philosophical tradition ... is ... based on evidence". The implicit leveling of science with the beliefs of an individual, biologist though he is, goes unnoticed. Presumably confusion (familiar 3 years back in our EHA discussions) between 'science' and 'scientist' is mostly to blame. It is of course (as we ourselves now more fully realise) up to nature, not man, to determine the outcome of empiricism. We read next, the author's page 11, "Science has always aspired to empiricism but has not always lived up to that aspiration". As an illogical attempt to judge by oneself in place of posterity these words could hardly be more revealing.

It may seem pernickety to thus criticise a book which otherwise sets out the futility of "science wars" and "Darwin wars" argumentation and draws timely attention to the importance of language, rather than of our genes in general, to the differentiation of man from other animals. The writer's presumptions in the name of professional philosophy are to some extent less to be concerned about than the inappropriate subjectivism of Dawkins; whom Dupré himself takes up on several points. Nevertheless the widely acknowledged need, which we as humanists must surely all feel, to correctly explain science for the general public is - as noted earlier - again being put under threat.

One may well ask why our criticism of professional philosophy can itself escape the charge of being a presumption. Well, we are not that naive. All defence must rest in admitting that ours, a thesis capable of much variation anyway, may even be completely overturned by fresh, further evidence. We see it as (a significant, necessary) hypothesis and - like all philosophy - not accepted fact.

"it is hard to see why God himself, presumably being supremely ordered, does not require a designer" p.51.

"- pain, disease, natural disasters . . . to prevent these evils . . . an omnipresent being could not lack the power and an infinitely benevolent one could not lack the will" p.52.

"Science doesn't declare that there are no gods, but it certainly doesn't say there are any" p.57.

"life . . . spent in adoration of . . . the Supreme Being. It is hard to believe that the value of such a life is independent of whether there is, in fact, any such being to adore" p.59.

"Science does not contradict religion; but it makes it increasingly improbable that religious discourse has any subject matter." p.60.

"humans and other animals . . .the similarities . . . are too great for it to be credible that in one case the behaviour reflects an underlying soul or mind, while in the other there is no such thing, only the grinding away of neural machinery." p.64.

"experiments that aimed to teach symbolic languages to great apes . . . the success of these experiments would leave a huge gulf between the achievements of our own species and that of any other." p.69.

"explanation of behaviour . . . without appealing to both structure and content. I certainly cannot eat oysters unless there are oysters in my general vicinity." p.79.

"It is still very common to hear references to 'genes for' this or that trait - eye colour, intelligence, height, homosexuality, and so on." p.84.

"most men have no disposition to rape . . . The preceeding example, though admittedly on the fringes of respectability even for evolutionary psychology, points to the . . . deficiencies in that pseudo-scientific project." p.95.

"variations, well below the level of distinct species, are referred to as ecotypes" p.102.

"Stereotypes often have a basis in truth. Although . . . male sociologists often appear to find . . . dominant male elephant seals or stags holding their rivals at bay and enjoying access to harems of females intuitively relevant to the human condition." p.115.

After a regular 'coffee morning' many participants - plus a distinguished Bulletin-reader non-member - met up at the Morpeth pub on Millbank. Our group enjoyed the usual 'talking lunch' before making its way round to the Tate. It was unforeseen I'm afraid, but the new extension was so crowded (with a, separate, special Turner exhibition) that the cloakroom could take no more 'cloaks' . . . leaving the member from Norwich no alternative to appearing like the tourist he was.

However, we all went undaunted upstairs to the main galleries, where it was relatively peaceful, and we could view at leisure some magnificent Turners and an interesting sample of Victorian and Edwardian paintings. Whistler and Sickert were well represented but some of the lesser-known works were quite intriguing - there is a wealth of work at the Tate, though not all of first rank, which well deserves to be seen. Victorian artists are rather predictable, but their technique is beyond criticism and they offer an insight into social conditions of that era. Some however border on an overt sentimentality.

Partway through the tour we lost one of our group, and discovered afterwards that he had been adding a nostalgic trip to a residence and medical school in the area where he was a student in the fifties! The more faithful members of the group sought well-earned refreshment and were able, as the writer is a Tate member, to find it in the members' room. Here subsequent discussion, ranging from art to politics, continued until closing time broke us up. We all agree, at least, that it was an enjoyable enough experience for us to be looking forward to the next outing, to Hogarth's House in Chiswick.

•Appendix B, Ealing-speak
An exchange of views under 'Letters to the Editor' in the Bulletin was still open but Raymond Carlisle agreed to confine the 'Raymond speak' entries to the following 4:
ALPHA (historical interest only), POPULAR SELECTION, COMBINED HUMANISM, and HUMAN AWARENESS.

•Humanism - two main types?
Discussion on based on a differentiation between subjective and objective aspects is to be deferred pending publication, much delayed, of the book, "Combined Humanism in Ealing".

•God and the Bam earthquake
Owing to a preceeding extended Committee meeting and a following outing to the Tate Britain Gallery there was no time for this proposed topic.