Knowing the Score: What Sports Can Teach Us About Philosophy (and What Philosophy Can Teach Us About Sports)

In Knowing the Score, philosopher David Papineau uses sports to illuminate some of modern philosophy's most perplexing questions. As Papineau demonstrates, the study of sports clarifies, challenges, and sometimes confuses crucial issues in philosophy. The tactics of road bicycle racing shed new light on questions of altruism, while sporting family dynasties reorient the nature v. nurture debate. Why do sports competitors choke? Why do fans think God will favor their team over their rivals? How can it be moral to deceive the umpire by framing a pitch? From all of these questions, and many more, philosophy has a great deal to learn.

An entertaining and erudite book that ranges far and wide through the sporting world, Knowing the Score is perfect reading for armchair philosophers and Monday morning quarterbacks alike.

David Papineau is Professor of Philosophy of Natural Science at King’s College London and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the City University of New York. He is the author of eight philosophical books, and has served as president of the Aristotelian Society, the Mind Association, and the British Society for the Philosophy of Science. He is also a keen amateur sportsman, and has competed as an adult at soccer, rugby, golf, squash, cricket, field hockey, and sailing, without noteworthy success in any. He spends as much time as he can on the Blackwater Estuary in Essex, where he and his family have a house and a number of small boats.＂