Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

I was surprised but I really enjoyed this book! Tomkins, who is a business professor, has a side interest in philosophy and he decided to write a book about his hobby even though he is a tyro in this field. Still, his book is well worth one's time.
On the positive side, Prof. Tomkins has read many top-notch books on philosophy but as best I could tell his exploration of the real sciences have been mostly limited to the works of Richard Dawkins (which are excellent) but he, in my opinion, must delve much more deeply into the hard sciences and learn that many of his cited philosophers have been recently shown to be simply wrong.
Like it or not, "shared" environment has been shown to play little or no role in human development or socialization, and "non-shared" environment (which has a limited effect in about 30% of over 17,000 human traits) is both idiosyncratic and random leaving almost no room for intervention and/or amelioration as shown by the past 70 years of only fruitless attempts by well-meaning researchers.
Prof. Tomkins admits that he has not read 99% of the literature on free will may be surprised to learn that it does not exist. Instead, it was first imagined by theologians in the Middle Ages to explain evil since their omnipotent and omnipresent God was solely good.
Today, science is fast approaching the perhaps unavoidable truth that biological determinism explains everything in almost 70% of human traits. In perhaps one more decade I expect all remaining doubt to be erased by the research findings.

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"A Layman Looks At Philosophy" is an admirable and personal work by an author who from the outset makes it abundantly (and repeatedly) clear that he does not consider himself an expert in the field of philosophy. Let's say that one can already gather this from the title and it was the main reason why I requested to read the book. The author previously worked as Emeritus Professor of Business Finance at the University of Bath so the topic does not relate directly to his field of expertise. Nonetheless, he has had sufficient time to reflect upon the philosophical works he had read and on what he considers to be a worthwhile life. The book was written in two phases, starting in late 2014 to 2015, and saw its completion under the current lockdown restrictions. The author explains straight off the bat that he is not religious. An initial chapter on the science of evolution and the current scientific knowledge pertaining to Einsteinian and Quantum Field Theory serves as a contemporary foundation on which to place the subsequent philosophical building blocks. The author goes on to tackle the concept of God and the notion of religion, metaphysics, awareness and consciousness, ethics and aesthetics. After this there is a brief summarisation of what the consolidated total means for the author to lead a worthwhile life as an individual. What logically follows on from this is the expansion from the individual to a society, thus neatly covering political philosophy. The final chapter of the book considers the philosophy of language.

The charm of the book is that it is clearly a personal journey during which the author is attempting to structure his own thoughts, as no doubt we all at some point or other have attempted to do. I know I certainly have: what person do I want to be? Why? Am I religious? What parts of me do I consider innate, and what have I learned through trial and error upon which I have structured my personal heuristics? What determines whether I'm doing good or bad? What makes me happy? The book is targeted at anyone interested in philosophy, maybe not complete novices but by no means experts. It is not a general history of philosophy discussing the philosophers and their ideas through the ages, but a personal structured reflection and this structure definitely worked for me. The author repeatedly refers to Anthony Kenny's "A New History of Western Philosophy" as one of his main philosophical references. I must say that this repeated advertising has led me to put this on my "to-read"pile. If I were forced to mention a point of criticism, I'd say that the final chapter on language felt somewhat shoehorned into the latter part of the book and it can be hard going at times. I did now and again feel somewhat lost when it came to the chapter on aesthetics and recreation. All in all though, a highly enjoyable and recommendable read.

I found this to be an interesting and comprehensible gateway into the world and ideas of philosophy. The author takes his reader on a gentle and useful journey into a world which for many is difficult to navigate. This is a useful volume for getting into the flow with thinkers and ideas.