'Dr Livingstone, I presume?' Stanley was spot on: it was Dr Livingstone. Elsewise his presuming so wouldn't have become the stuff of legend. A question suggests itself: how did he manage to presume so cleverly? Of all the things that Stanley might have presumed, how did he hit on the one that was both pertinent and true? Why didn't he presume Queen Victoria, for example? Or Tower Bridge?

At first blush, that sounds like an easy sort of question. In fact, it's an abyss. Though philosophers and psychologists have been working on such matters for a couple of millennia, the best they've got is less a theory than a programme of research. That is the background for José Luis Bermúdez's book, so let's start with it.

LRB 9 October 2003 | PDF Download