The American adventurer Chris McCandless said that happiness is only real when it is shared. I would say something similar about knowledge. A piece of academic research may be rigorous, original, and ground-breaking, but it becomes real and meaningful only when it is shared with fellow specialists, scholars in other disciplines, students, and interested readers everywhere. Only then does it become a contribution.

It is not easy to communicate specialist knowledge to a wide audience, explaining complex ideas without caricaturing them and guiding readers gently around bewildering theoretical landscapes, and I admire scholars who can do it well. And I admire publishers who produce series devoted to making the latest scholarship widely available. The blue-spined Pelican books imprint, created by Allen Lane in 1937 and loved by generations of autodidacts, is a fine example.

I was therefore delighted when Cambridge University Press invited me to edit a series on philosophy of mind for their Elements project. I knew immediately what I wanted to do. Of course, I wanted to produce a series that met the Elements remit — providing concise, authoritative summaries of contemporary research as a resource for scholars and graduate students. But I wanted to do more. I wanted to construe ‘philosophy of mind’ broadly, to include philosophical work in psychology, cognitive science, and AI. I wanted to commission volumes on all the major topics, debates, and research programmes in the area, so that the series would offer a comprehensive overview of the field. I wanted to recruit a diverse range of authors and give proper representation to the many women now working in a traditionally male-dominated field. And I wanted the volumes to be accessible to as wide an audience as possible.

To achieve this, I have taken a hands-on role as series editor. As well as planning the series, corresponding with authors, overseeing the reviewing process, and making the final decisions, I have read each manuscript carefully and offered detailed suggestions on how to make it more reader-friendly. This has involved a lot of work, but it has been well worth it.

There are now twenty volumes in print, fifteen in preparation, and still more planned. I am delighted with the results and grateful to the authors for their hard work and patience with my requests. I won’t single out any volumes for special praise. I think of myself as an intellectual midwife and have no favourites among the children I have helped to bring into the world. I will, however, mention five exciting additions to the series that will be appearing soon: Jesse Prinz on emotion, Ann-Sophie Barwich on the senses, Elisabeth Pacherie on action, Vincent Müller and Guido Löhr on artificial minds, and Raphaël Millière and Cameron Buckner on generative AI.

I like to look at the published Elements on my bookshelf. Like the old Pelican volumes, they have blue spines, and I hope they will play a similar role in making knowledge real.