Flew, Antony G(arrard) N(ewton)(1923-)

British author, humanist, and professor of philosophy who has written widely on parapsychological subjects. Flew was born February 11, 1923, in London. He became a lecturer at Christ Church College, Oxford, England, and at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. In 1954 he became a professor of philosophy at the University of Keele, Staffordshire, England. He was a distinguished research fellow at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center, Bowling Green State University; a professor emeritus of the University of Reading, in England; and a visiting teacher and lecturer at several universities around the world. Flew is a humanist-rationalist and is known internationally as a skeptic regarding paranormal claims. Over the years he has contributed many articles on philosophy and parapsychology, especially on issues of personal survival, to various journals, including the Cambridge Journal, the British Journal of Sociology, the Philosophical Quarterly, New Biology, and the Rationalist Annual, and contributed articles for several anthologies.

His many books include A New Approach to Psychical Research (1953), his main text touching on the paranormal; Hume's Philosophy of Belief (1961); God and Philosophy (1966); Evolutionary Ethics (1967); An Introduction to Western Philosophy (1971); Crime or Disease? (1973); Thinking About Thinking (1975; reissued as Thinking Straight, 1977); The Presumption of Atheism (1976); Sociology, Equality, and Education (1976); The Warren-Flew Debate (1977); A Rational Animal (1978); Philosophy: An Introduction (1979); The Politics of Procrustes (1981); and The Logic of Mortality (1987). He also edited the 1964 book Body, Mind and Death.

Sources:

Berger, Arthur S., and Joyce Berger. The Encyclopedia of Parapsychology and Psychical Research. New York: Paragon House, 1991.

Flew, Antony G. N., ed. Body, Mind and Death. New York: Macmillan, 1964.

——. "Is There a Case for Disembodied Spirit?" Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 66 (1972).

——. The Logic of Mortality. Oxford: Blackwell, 1987.

——. A New Approach to Psychical Research. London: C. A. Watts, 1953.

Ludwig, J. K., ed. Philosophy and Parapsychology. Buffalo, N.Y.: Promethus Books, 1978.