For many years, I owned and rode an ancient Moto Guzzi V50 (Mark II) motorbike. Being of Italian construction and design, it was both desirable and temperamental, and I established a long and close relationship with the proprietor of the nearest garage specialising in these strangely charming bikes. After a while, when he realised that he was getting more work from me than he could fit into his schedule, he taught me a few basic procedures, the most advanced of which, I recall, was recalibrating the tappets. Child's play for a proper mechanic; but satisfyingly advanced for me.

And this is the nub of Matthew Crawford's book. The first sentence under the heading "about the author" reads: "Matthew Crawford is a philosopher and mechanic." That means he gets paid both to think (and teach people about thinking) and fix motorbikes  in a little workshop in Shockoe, Virginia, should you ever be in that neck of the woods and need his services.

Crawford has, like many of us, intuited that there is something very wrong about the way the world is run right now, and his book clarifies that intuition and hopes to set in motion a process that will act on it. The point is that we are living in an alienated society; supposedly "knowledge-based", but in fact becoming ever more ignorant. We are being separated from the products of our own minds and hands. When the car breaks down and the only interface is a black box containing a computer, we are denied the chance to cultivate a sense of purpose and achievement by tinkering with it ourselves.

Similarly, we have created a managerial class whose members are obliged to speak in corporate waffle  usually in order to cover themselves against arbitrary disaster coming from higher up. "The intent of this language is not to deceive," Crawford says, "it is to preserve one's interpretive latitude so that if the context changes"  and here he quotes another astute commentator  "a new, more appropriate meaning can be attached to the language already used." Similarly, the last financial crisis was caused by economic models and demands which had nothing to do with actual conditions  that is, the true creditworthiness of people being given sub-prime mortgages whose payments they could not maintain.

There are plenty of other examples, all of which lead to a desiccated sense of our own wellbeing and usefulness. He cites studies which show that when children are repeatedly praised, "they become risk-averse and dependent on others". Instead he prefers the intuitions which come from hands-on experience  such as that of the dedicated mechanic. (I was rather won over by his claim that "people who ride motorcycles have gotten something right", and he is delighted to put himself in their service.)

I have my misgivings, though. He suggests a "progressive-republican" outlook. "Let us say that republicanism is a tribunal spirit that looks with active hostility on whatever erodes the stature of man." Now when I hear terms such as "stature" and "progressive-republican" being bandied about in proximity, alarm bells start ringing; when there is a big quote from Matthew D'Ancona on the front cover ("the best book I have read for ages") the ringing becomes almost intolerable.

But there is something compelling about what Crawford is saying; and one senses its moral justness, uncomfortable though it may be to the effete, mechanically lazy urbanite I have become. And I also take comfort from that small "r" of "republicanism", which suggests a non-party line.

After all, he does nail the causes of the economic crisis, and he is scornful of the way that the west has gone to some lengths to avoid the concentration of political power (hmm, we'll let that one pass) but has done nothing to prevent the concentration of economic power "or take account of how such concentration damages the conditions under which full human flourishing becomes possible". Wherever you are on the political spectrum, you have to admit he has a point.