Philosophy: Course Weblog

The Big Gathering

(PegasusHoplite28) — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 15:25:52 GMT

Okay, supposedly the ATDP Philosophy course is planning to meet together today at the Tolman lab. There, we plan to get everyone signed up and active on this course website. That includes Mr. James!

First order of the day for you guys is to sign up an account.
Second, go to the User List, find your username, and edit the account whichever way you find fit. That, hopefully, will include your real name as well as some contact information.
Third, go to the Chatroom and be anti-social by communicating to people sitting next to you through a computer!
Lastly, go to the Forums (if we still have time) and reply to some of the threads started. Remember, feel free to start threads if you'd like; just try to place them in the right forum.

Updates 7/15/05

(PegasusHoplite28) — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 16:17:38 GMT

There are more forum threads for students to participate in. If students (and the instructor) would please sign up, then we can truly begin to have conversations.

Also, plan to have a meeting in the chatroom on Monday, July 18, 2005 around 9:00 P.M. just to have a friendly chat about whatever.

Instructor's First Words

(PegasusHoplite28) — Sun, 10 Jul 2005 05:38:03 GMT

“According to the Centennial Record of the University of California Frederick Billings, was reminded of the lines of Bishop Berkeley, 'westward the course of empire takes its way,' and suggested that the town and college site be named for the eighteenth-century British philosopher and poet." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley,_California)

“Upon one of [UC Berkeley’s] walls hangs a full-length portrait of the philosopher, copied by John F. Weir, from Smybert's portrait, which is owned by Yale. Thanks to the suggestions of Frederick Billings, who proposed the name and gave the portrait, Berkeley, whose enterprise upon the Atlantic seaboard came to naught in the middle of the last century, is now held in perpetual remembrance upon the Pacific coast by the grateful students of a thriving University.”
(http://www.famousamericans.net/georgeberkeley/)

George Berkeley, "Verse on the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America."
"The Muse, disgusted at an age and clime
Barren of every glorious theme,
In distant lands now waits a better time.
Producing subjects worthy fame.
"Westward the course of empire takes its way;
The first four acts already past,
A fifth shall close the drama with the day;
Time's Noblest offspring is the last." (http://r2rministries.com/history/X0082_Prophetic_Voices_Ame.html)
When Berkeley wrote that poem, he was on the East Coast trying to raise money for a college in Bermuda to be erected for the purpose of “converting the savage Americans to Christianity.” During that time, he met on numerous occasions with the American philosopher Samuel Johnson, who later became the president of Kings College, New York (now Columbia). This is not however the Samuel Johnson of Boswell’s Life of Johnson, who is reported to have refuted Berkeley’s idealism by kicking a rock.