J. J. C. Smart was one of the most important British philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century, though during that period he worked almost entirely in Australia. He has been a leading figure in the development in philosophy in the English-speaking world of a naturalistic and science-oriented approach to metaphysics and epistemology to replace the emphasis on language and conceptual analysis that dominated at the middle of the century.

John Jamieson Carswell Smart--Jack, as he is known to friends and acquaintances--was born into a Scottish academic family on 16 September 1920. His father, William Marshall Smart, was John Couch Adams Astronomer at the University of Cambridge and wrote many mathematical and popular works on astronomy, including Text-Book of Spherical Astronomy (1931) and Stellar Dynamics (1938). His mother, Isabel Macquarie Carswell Smart, the daughter of an eminent psychiatrist, published verse, principally for children. In 1937 Smart's father became the Regius Professor...