Oddly, since by now I've written quite a lot on early modern philosophers, I didn't care for the history of philosophy, which I thought dull and obscure, until I got a minor job writing articles for a children's encyclopedia in the history of science and began to make connections between science and philosophy.

Epicurus was not at all interested in what we would call the problems of mass society, and he thought civic politics was just trouble and to be avoided by the wise.

The higher the coefficient of inequality (Gini coefficient) in a society, the worse things tend to be for those at the bottom.

The life-world of human and animal experience, with colours, tastes, solid objects, is a perceptual effect of massed atoms.

People formerly seemed unable to evaluate a woman's c.v. or to accept a range of personal and communicative styles from the exuberant and confident to the sober and pedantic. It's much better than it was, and a number of male philosophers have been extraordinarily helpful in detecting and criticising everyday sexism in the profession.

Morality has in the past made progress when we broadened the category of things we weren't permitted to harm (animals, 'infidels'); saw through some delusions and rationalisations about what harms are good for people themselves (prison punishment, hysterectomies for unhappy 1950s wives); and readjusted our for-the-good of others criteria so as to demand only reasonable sacrifices (ceasing to use children as handy chimney sweeps).

In the old systems, hierarchies emanate power from above to below through forms of line management and are ideologically supported by cosmologies and theologies featuring celestial rulers and their deputies - the 'rule of the best.'