Philosophy

Contents:

1. My Philosophy Class Lessons & Other Content

2. Aesthetical Philosophy

Introduction:

If you read the "About Me" section on my homepage you will know that the majority of my academic and professional career revolved around science. I only came into contact occassionally with philosophy and those intersections usually occured during those times when I found, for whatever reason, the need to reconcile science with my faith. Sometimes these nexus would occur while I was in college, other times in my job as a science teacher, but I never delved too deeply on the subject being either too busy with my college classes or too busy as a teacher.

When I turned 40 I had an epistemology crisis. This occured when I had a "falling out" with the church (a non denomination Christian church) that I had spent nearly twenty years in. This was a church that I had chosen not because I liked their music, or the people, or that they made me feel good about myself--no, this was a church I was commited to, believed in with confidence not only in their teaching, but their leadership, and my place in it. By my late thirties we started to grow apart until I could no longer remain in the church. It was a traumatic experience for myself and my family, but by grace we made the transition and I returned to the Catholic faith of my youth and I and my wife and children were happy with our new home.

During the transition I wondered how it was that I had become so convinced in the teachings of the church that I had left? It was then that I began to consider such issues as "criteria of truth," not only as they pertained to issues of religion, but of science, and indeed all forms of knowledge. Interestingly enough, I had a friend, Tom, at the church that was going through a similar crisis the same time I was. We would spend long evenings at the local restuarant bar drinking Long Island Ice Teas while discussing these issues. Tom's epistemological crisis lead him to David Hume, mine lead me to Saint Augustine. Tom eventually became an Atheist while I continued my journey of faith and our ways ultimately parted. For the next twenty years I read almost everything I could find in philosophy but I was particular drawn to the Socratic philosophers, Medieval philosophy, Scholasticism, and even a group of pre-revolutionary Russian philosophers known as the Slavophiles. Simoultaneous with this my Catholicism began moving eastward towards Byzantine Catholicism and eventually to Eastern Orthodoxy. Today, I find myself with one foot in Western Christiandom and the other foot in the East and I am fine with this arrangement.

My interest in philosophy seeped into my teaching as I began to spend time discussing the Philosophy of Science and eventually this lead to an opportunity to teach Philosophy in high school in addition to my usual repretoire of Biology and Chemistry classes. I found these classes particularly gratifying. Whereas in my science class the students always came in with some knowledge of science, my philosophy students knew next to nothing about philosophy, its domains, its great thinkers, and controversies. My students were in an unfamiliar territory and I had to create "maps" for them to help them find their way through it. I watched and participated with them as they went from being lost and insecure about the terrain of philosophy to their finding there way around and beginning to be comfortable enough to set out on their own to explore and question. Great stuff, indeed!

The notes and writing you'll find list on the contents are from these classes. These writings not only include biographies of philosophers but also important topics including the Realist vs Nominalist controveries, the Philosophy of Science, Christian, Jewish, and Islamic Philosophy, and other topics. I only wish that I had started my interest in philosophy sooner so that I could have taught more classes and I might have written more that I could have shared from this period of my teaching career.

You will also find a section which I have called "Aesthetic Philosophy" which includes material that I wrote over a two year period of time when I was working on my Masters in Science Education. My thesis was entitled, Teaching Science in the Context of Classical Aesthetics. This section includes the thesis and supporting material.

You will notice that the web pages from my Philosophy classes and my Thesis look different than my "new" pages. Rather than recontruction them into my newer format I have decided to pretty much keep them as they were.

Finally, I hope to add new material now that I'm retired, but I guess we'll see about that.

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