UMBERTO ECO: PHILOSOPHY IS NOT STAR TREK. Though having spent my childhood in the company of philosophers, some quite eminent, I’m not sure that Star Trek comes off as badly as all that in comparison. But then, I have been reproved for my disrespect of philosophy — or, at least, philosophers — by no less than Derek Bok — and in the New York Times Book Review, at that. So I am presumably one of those flyover people with low-sloping foreheads that the Timesmen get so exercised about.