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November 29, 2004
OCLC Top 1000 Books
OCLC has a top 1000 of books in member libraries. I'm wondering why Lucretius is the highest philosophical work at #47. There's representation by Plato, Aristotle (in spades), Lucretius, Plotinus, Augustine, Boethius, Aquinas, Hobbes, Locke, Kant, Rousseau, Mill, and Nietzsche. I didn't see any other major figures, though Cicero, Marcus Aurelius, Plutarch, Bacon, and Wollstonecraft count as minor ones by most standards. I don't know if people like Machiavelli, Newton, Voltaire, Thoreau, and Marx count. I'd include some of Frederick Douglass and W.E.B. DuBois' work as philosophy, but not most of their writings. There may be others I wasn't sure if I should include, but what's more interesting is who is absent: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Berkeley, Hume, Hegel, the American pragmatists, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, Russell, Wittgenstein, Carnap, Quine, Sartre, Foucault, Derrida, and Rawls. Some of those are especially surprising. Hat Tip: Crooked Timber
Posted by Jeremy at 5:37 PM | TrackBack
November 19, 2004
Mind Body Unit
Does anyone have suggestions for teaching the mind-body problem? I just finished this unit and once again found it difficult. I can't seem to get the students interested in the different views. So, if any of you have ideas, I'd sure like to hear them.
Posted by jwollam at 4:31 PM | Comments (13)
Philosophical Gourmet Report
The 2004-2006 Philosophical Gourmet Report is now up. It's nice to see that losing two junior faculty members and gaining (I believe) three junior faculty members and three senior faculty members (in addition to an extremely well-known continental philosopher in the religion department who insists on teaching in philosophy at the graduate level and is listed on the faculty page of the Gourmet Report for our department) since the last report (not to mention keeping one well-known senior faculty member whom everyone thought was going to leave) has given us an increase of ... oh, wait, we didn't move. Did everyone else improve that much? I don't get it. We should at least be nearing the top 20 now, and I'd say many above us don't belong as high as they are and haven't for years, but Leiter's methodology favors some schools that have lost a lot in the last few years, with part-time or semi-retired faculty pulling things along and lots of turnover, the same situation haunting Syracuse but often with a smaller faculty base and therefore a more serious effect from it, but the name recognition of the school or some other factor undiscernible to me has exaggerated the ranking. There are a number of schools with only one or two faculty members I've barely heard of who are a good deal higher than us. Maybe it's just from lack of familiarity with their fields, but that alone strikes me as odd. It's the fact that we can gain so much and not move in the rankings that really seems fishy to me, though.
Posted by Jeremy at 8:48 AM | Comments (5)
November 15, 2004
Philosophers' Carnival V
The 5th Philosophers' Carnival is now up at Ciceronian Review. Nearly half the posts this time are from blogs I haven't heard of before, so check it out if you want to explore some new philosophy blogs.
Posted by Jeremy at 8:04 AM
Epistemology/Film
Could anyone suggest a good movie(s) that introduces the fundamental concepts in (classic) Epistemology? One day I hope to introduce every philosophical concept through film.
Posted by kkukla at 12:25 AM | Comments (5)
November 13, 2004
New blog
There is a new blog (well, new to me). It's focus is teaching philosophy--Metatome:Watering the Roots of Philosophical Practice
-Chuck
Posted by cmaxfield at 2:03 PM
November 10, 2004
Philosophers' Carnival V plug
We still have a few days to write something and submit it to the next Philosophers' Carnival. If you're working on something and want some feedback, write it up, post it, and tell Richard about it here. The Carnival will be Monday, November 15. I suggest submitting anything by the end of the week.
Posted by Jeremy at 4:50 PM
November 3, 2004
Undetached Rabbit Parts
That's the name of the newest philosophy grad student blog, this time from Western Michigan University. It's so new that there's only one post so far (from yesterday), but it's already got four comments.
Posted by Jeremy at 10:58 AM | Comments (3)