I've started taking a philosophy class over at West Chester. It's an intro class, and I think I'm supposed to feel out of my league, but not because of the course material.
The instructor, Professor Larry Udell, seems reasonably competent in teaching the subject of philosophy. In fact, I get the feeling that I would kind of like this guy. He seems pretty techie - just enough to get himself in trouble. I'm glad he's the instructor and that he is so well learned in philosophy, because otherwise I would be stuck. No, my problem with philosophy - and in particular this class - is actually the students in it.
I foolishly took a seat in the front row. I think I must be getting old. I've gotten to the point where I just want a seat. I don't want to have to crawl down between rows of desks to get to my seat or have to sit amongst gossiping teenagers. I like a little room to spread out, and I like the immediacy of the entry and exit of the seat, and I like being close enough to hear and see the teacher without a coiff interrupting.
The unfortunate side effect of sitting in the front is that someone will need to sit behind you. Since I have provided a blockade between student and teacher, sitting in row two is not a teen faux pas, and makes it prime real estate. In my case, I was backsided by a dude in a dark green beret.
This wasn't the kind of beret that you would see on the shores of Normandy. It was the kind that bohemian hipsters took to wearing, a sort of golfer's hat without the golf. Complete with the characteristic sideburns and glasses, this dude looked rather like that guy from The Handler, Joey Pantoliano.
I don't know how to say this without getting slapped with the gross generalization fish, but beret guy clearly signed up for this class to debate philosophy as he understood it, and not learn philosophy as it was taught.
Here's my belief on this issue: I've got a pretty good knowledge of computers. But I tend to keep it to myself in public forums because, well, it's modesty or something. It seems like the right thing to do to let a teacher do his thing and teach without interrupting or trying to argue with everything he says, whether I know it's wrong or not. I mean, unless the guy is a complete moron, he's probably got a few worthwhile things to say. After all, the university did hire him to teach the class.
Likewise, I would have expected beret guy to present his understandings as questions rather than statements to the teacher. In his few interactions with Professor Udell concerning some of the basic philosophical concepts we learned in class on the first day, he pronounced he beliefs as true in the face of whatever the teacher had gone through great lengths to prepare. Fortunately the teacher let him down easy. I wouldn't have.
Anyway, I have him to contend with. And he's just the tip of my overall philosophical iceburg. I mean, overlook the rudeness to the teacher and you still have a guy that can't be wrong about philosophy. I'm not sure what you know about philosophy, but it seems it's not just one thing.
Philosophy is actually the root of modern science. Before there was a thing called "science", there was philosophy, and it included that discipline. It also included math and art. Philosophy is what allows a person to put everything into perspective. We all need little mental bins into which we throw things to categorize them, and the existence of this process is philosophy.
So a few things have wormed their way into my skull since last night. First off, nobody's philosophies are the same. You would have to be the same person. Even me telling you that nobody's philosophies are the same implies that I have a philosophy that encompasses this thought, which might be different from how you see it.
Secondly, the great philosophers of the past were just guys who tried to organize the world as they saw it in a way that made sense to them. And when they had it organized, they tried to teach it to others. That's why there are different ways of thinking. Realists/Idealists all exist because a person shared his philosophy with others, and they tended to agree.
Thirdly, and I don't really know whether this is true or not, but it seems to be since we're bothering to learn what we are, none of these philosophers is necessarily "correct". So if Descartes says that God exists and offers a proof for it, that doesn't necessarily make it so.
These things lead me on to my troubles with talking with others about philosophy, especially people who maintain beliefs such as beret boy. I mean, just because you learned it one way doesn't mean it's the way. Even the great philosophers disagreed with each other. For pity's sake, look at Plato and Aristotle. Plato was Aristotle's teacher, and even they didn't agree!
So I get tense when anyone says, this is really how it is. You can say that person X said things are a certain way. And you can say that you think things are a certain way. But you can't say, you may not refute that things are this way. Bugs me.
On top of that, many people who say they know things about philosophy know things because of books they've read of abstractions of philosophical writings. That is, books written to distill a philosopher's meaning into its essence. This is silly because how can you do that without interpreting the meaning of the original writing? Thankfully, we'll be reading the actual original texts in this course and will be able to form our own direct opinions of them. I don't plan to be an expert, but I plan to have enough knowledge to be able to filter the philosobabble from the enlightened.
Ok, so that's dealt with. Now on to Christian Girl. There's a girl who was sitting over on the side of the classroom who seems to be using this intro class to further her religious agenda. On every mention of the word "God" by the teacher, she would ask several questions.
Professor Udell made a specific mention that he was not going to cover the concept of God in this course, that there was so much to cover that such a topic of controversy deserved its own time. But she persisted. Apparently it's true that Descartes wrote his third Meditation on the existence of God, and "proved" it to be true.
But we're not studying that!
This just adds to the pile of stuff in my WCU experience that I'm labelling "christian religious fanatacism". It seems that there are quite a few at school. I'm not and would never condemn anyone the right to practice his own religion, but I'm certainly not going to sit while they extoll its virtues over what I believe, or what someone else believes, or what I could potentially believe if I didn't already have their same beliefs. Wackos.
I know I didn't really promise to relay any philosophy here, although that's really more what I intended, and I ended up writing more about my strange-minded classmates than anything. I really wanted to do so, though, so here goes...
One thing that the professor covered in class was the novel idea of the Earth travelling around the sun. As he says, it's really a trivial matter to prove - or to convince with reasonable certainty - to someone that the Earth is round. And with a little bravery and boldness one could potentially prove it. See also Magellan.
But, in 1543, the year he died, Copernicus published a book that said that the Earth travels arond the sun. Not only that, but the other planets (all 5 at the time) did the same thing.
"So what?" you say. "Duh," you say.
The telescope wasn't really invented until Galileo (ok, there were rumors of prior models, but no production) came along. The amazing part was that Galileo wasn't even born until 1564. So Copernicus could only observe the heavens with his naked eye, and never really knew that the planets were balls of matter, nor that the sun was a ball of burning gasses.
And in a time when the popular theory said that the universe revolved around the Earth, the theory not just that the Earth revolved around the sun but that the sun was "near" (and not exactly at) the center of the universe, well... That's heresy.
Even more amazing is that I bet that you, sitting right where you are, can't offer the slightest bit of proof that this is true. I mean, if the Earth is moving, why aren't you falling off? Remember Newton didn't come along to talk about his three laws of motion until about 1666, so that's out of bounds in your proof. The laws of motion came about more than 100 years after Galileo was born, which was 20 years after Copernicus kicked it!
Even Galileo had a hard time convincing critics that Copernicus was the man. Remember all of that dropping of balls off of the tower of Pisa? Well, people said that if the Earth was really moving and/or rotating, then the ball would not drop straight down. It would stay still as the Earth moved away. Weird stuff.
A quick search on Goolge reveals that this "orbit the sun" concept is still in hot debate in some circles. This rudimentary explanation requires Galileo's work to show that the Earth orbits the sun. There are other sources that say the only was to do it is to measure stellar parallax. Not only is it something that you can't do without a telescope, but it's nuts! Even so, it's not quite as insane as this.
Anyway, I've been trying to figure out how these guys ever reasoned that the universe worked the way it did. It's pretty interesting stuff. If this Philosophy class covers it (and it may, since 1543 is the only date I'm required to memorize for this class) I'll be sure to mention it here for your amusement.
Until then, the challenge awaits!
