[^24] In a famous anecdote of the history of science...

[^24] In a famous anecdote of the history of science, Laplace, explaining his model of the universe to Napoleon, declares God as a 'redundant hypothesis'. For Laplace’s famous reply that ‘I had no need of that hypothesis’ see, Roger Hahn, ‘Laplace and the Mechanistic Universe’ in God and Nature, ed. David Lindberg and Ronald Numbers, (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986).

[^25] Rorty goes so far as to attribute the 'invention of the mind' to Descartes and his cogito which has come to be the source of modern theories of knowledge and the ill-formulated mind-body problem. See his Philosophy and…