Charlie Dunbar Broad, the English epistemologist, historian of philosophy, moral philosopher, philosopher of science, and writer on the philosophical aspects of psychical research, was born at Harlesden, now a suburb of London. The only child of middle-class parents in comfortable circumstances, he received a good education at Dulwich College. With his special interest and ability in science and mathematics he won, in 1905, a science scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge, with which Broad's philosophical career was to be chiefly associated. Despite success in his work at Cambridge, he became convinced that he would never be outstanding as a scientist and turned to philosophy, in which he took first-class honors with special distinction in 1910. A year later he was elected to a fellowship at Trinity because of a dissertation that became his first book, Perception, Physics, and Reality (Cambridge, U.K., 1914).

From 1911 to 1920 Broad...