The attractions of Knowing the Score, David Papineau’s collection of essays about sports and philosophy, are foreshadowed by the witty cover of its U.S. edition, which reproduces, and riffs on, a detail from Raphael’s School of Athens. It shows Plato and Aristotle, the fresco’s two central figures. Aristotle extends a hand toward the viewer; Plato points an index finger gracefully to the heavens, and on its tip is balanced a spinning basketball.
Papineau is a well-known academic philosopher and an enthusiastic amateur athlete with an ecumenical interest in sports. After agreeing to speak in a run-up conference to the 2012 London Olympics, he became unsatisfied with his attempts at writing a “typical” philosophy of sports lecture, one that might analyze drug use or some other current controversy from various philosophical perspectives. He decided instead to take something interesting and, so to speak, run with it—choosing the fast-reaction skills needed to hit a pitched baseball or return a serve in tennis. These are puzzling both physiologically (how can there be sufficient time to observe, decide, and react?) and philosophically (how can a conscious intention direct the lightning-fast, automatic actions necessary to carry it out?). He was pleased with the outcome, which seemed to shed light on both sports and philosophy. He began posting essays about sports on his blog, and the results, revised, make up this book.
Sport is a universal human activity, a source of joy.
Witty and jargon-free, it can engage
