Profile: Nick Denyer

Looking back to very early childhood, I remember thoughts of a kind that I have later learnt to label “philosophical”. For example, I was much puzzled by the fact that whenever I felt rain on one hand, I could also feel it on the other. From this fact, it seemed to follow that if ever it is raining in any place, then it is raining also in places close by that place, and therefore in places close by places close by that place,…and so on, so that if ever it is raining anywhere, then it is raining everywhere all at once - which is not in fact the case.

As a schoolboy at the Manchester Grammar School, I was very pleased to learn that other people too had felt such puzzles, and that I could make a serious study of them. Later, I went on to study both philosophy and classics, first at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and next at Saint John’s College, Cambridge. Nowadays, I am fellow in philosophy of Trinity College, Cambridge, and lecturer in the Faculty of Classics. My most recent book is a new edition, twenty five years after the original publication, of Language, Thought and Falsehood in Ancient Greek Philosophy.