How myths work -- Our place in the world -- Progress, science and modernity -- Thought has many forms -- The aims of reduction -- Dualistic dilemmas -- Motives, materialism and megalomania -- What is action -- Tidying the inner scene : why memes? -- The sleep of reason produces monsters -- Getting rid of the ego -- Cultural evolution? -- Selecting the selectors -- Is reason sex-linked? -- The journey from freedom to desolation -- Biotechnology and the yuk factor -- The new alchemy -- The supernatural engineer -- Heaven and earth, an awkward history -- Science looks both ways -- Are you an animal? -- Problems about parsimony -- Denying animal consciousness -- Beasts versus the biosphere? -- Some practical dilemmas -- Problems of living with otherness -- Changing ideas of wildness