John McDowell, a professor of philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, was born in Boksburg, South Africa. After receiving his bachelor's from the University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland he was awarded a Rhodes scholarship to New College, Oxford, where he earned a second bachelor's in 1965 and a master's in 1969. In 1966 he became a fellow of University College, Oxford, where he remained until he joined the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh in 1986. McDowell is a fellow of both the British Academy and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

With the rise of modern science there emerged a view of the world that is radically different from that of everyday life, a view sometimes described as "the view from nowhere." This new view was made possible, McDowell argues, by a new clarity regarding natural scientific understanding. Modern natural science explains things not by...