Roger, you are simply amazing and I’m glad that I own all your books and read you regularly (I live here in Chicago and know your publisher, Ivan R. Dee).

Anyway, after a quick read-through (I’ll go back and read the piece more carefully and savor its ideas at leisure) the first thing that came to mind is this great Johnson quote (which I may have picked up from one of your essays):

“After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley’s ingenious sophistry to prove the nonexistence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it — “I refute it thus.”

Boswell: Life