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In science, the days are long gone when Michael Faraday, who started out as a bookseller’s apprentice, could teach himself enough to revolutionise a field. But “the questions that philosophy asks are questions that my 11-year-old nephew could understand, and I think that’s significant,” says Crane. If there is a God, who made God? But he adds: “Philosophy is a discipline. You’ve got to discipline your thought. It’s not just making stuff up. And disciplining your thought is very hard to achieve.”

Even so, amateurs have managed it. Ludwig Wittgenstein was an engineering student when he began reflecting on philosophy, and if we no longer categorise him as an outsider, that’s only because his work proved so persuasive. Copernicus and Galileo were spurned by the mainstream, but we never hear about the countless outsiders whose ideas rightly sank into obscurity. Anyway, the problem with theories such as Birnbaum’s is not that they’re ridiculous, Crane argues; it’s that they don’t go deep enough. “Lots of philosophers have thought of potential as being something that really exists,” he says. “But if it’s going to explain anything, it has to be something real. And if it’s something real, then it can’t explain how reality itself came into existence.” Philosophy’s darkest question persists.

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– http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/19/david-birnbaum-jeweller-philosopher