Platypus

As usual, I brought a book with me for my trip to Singapore.

My pick this time was Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar by Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein.

Maybe the subtitle would tell better what this book was all about: Understanding philosophy through jokes.

I must say I was seduced by the title several months ago when I came across this tiny volume, and I bought it without a second thought. The reason was simple: During the early days of my medical school, I was seriously thinking of writing a book on philosophy.

The title was: The Platypus of Philosophy.

I had even thought of how the book should begin in the Forward:

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When the first specimen of platypus was brought back to Europe, it was vigorously debated and widely regarded as an elaborated fraud. It had the mouth of a duck, tail of a beaver, feet of a otter, mammary glands, but it lay eggs. How could there be such a creature if it was not a deliberate chimerism?

But no. Platypus shared much similarity in many individual parts because they served the corresponding purposes well. In fact, platypus was far from a clumsy mimic; in the history of evolution, it actually represented the prototype of an entirely new (and the most advanced) Class - the mammals.

Similarly, in this book, you may find my view on human nature similar to that expressed by Arthur Schopenhauer (and Siddhartha Gautama), or my idea of god no different from Baruch Spinoza. Nonetheless, that's because I find they were correct in that particular part, and, when the best parts of these experts come together, they form a new system - which I believe, in the history of evolution of thinking in philosophy, opens the door to an entirely different class.

PS. I have grandiose personality disorder, I know.