Surely the greatest joy of the scholarly life is experiencing the generosity of colleagues, students, and friends in the course of a project such as this. It is true that your work gets better only as those around you help you make it better. I have been surrounded by a wonderful extended community of people who were patient with my most unreasonable requests and indulgent of my most fantastic flights of fancy. It is not easy trying to convince smart people that much of what they have taken for granted is illusory, that common sense is importantly nonsensical. It is not surprising that I have not convinced them all, perhaps not even very many. But I have, maybe just a bit, gotten them to think along with me during my last three years on this book. No one has been more generous and patient and thoughtful than my friend and colleague Professor Paul S. Davies of the College of William and Mary Department of Philosophy. Paul is a wonderful, and extraordinarily patient, teacher (and, not incidentally, a brilliant scholar). I hope he will not be embarrassed to see this product of our many conversations over lunch and coffee. It is not, after all, his fault if I have proved uneducable.