Our Philosophy and Other Essays

A zoologist decides to say what he actually believes. In “Our Philosophy” (1921), Oka Asajirō sets out in ten sections his view of the universe, of life, and of how a person should live in a world that evolution has made without a purpose. It is the most personal of his essays: plain, ironical, and unafraid of large questions.

Three shorter essays go with it. “The Logic of Solids” starts from a phrase in Bergson and asks why human reasoning is shaped by hard objects; “Distinctions Without Boundaries” argues that the lines we draw between kinds of things never have clean edges; “Philosophy as Art” claims that the grand systems of the philosophers should be judged the way one judges a painting. Oka writes with the impatience of a working scientist who has read too many books titled “The View of Life.”

Four complete pieces in a new translation from the Japanese, with a translator's note, endnotes and source information. Oka's science is that of his time and is kept as he wrote it.