This article originally appeared on Public Seminar and has been republished here with their kind permission. Earlier this week, and in advance of the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States, Andrew Sullivan produced a video for BBC Newsnight, detailing how the election campaign and Trump’s success reminded him of Socrates’ account
TagMichael Weinman
Constitutional Patriotism and America’s Shame
This article originally appeared on Public Seminar and has been republished here with their kind permission. America: we need to talk. And we are not going to like what we hear. But avoiding hearing what we don’t like to hear is what has brought us to a place where nearly the entire political and media establishment agree
The Question-Based Education of BCB: A Conversation With Michael Weinman
As a student of Michael (Weinman), I’ve been constantly impressed by his scope of knowledge, fascinated by his pedagogical style and inspired by his own intellectual passion: He reads ancient Greek and has written his Doctoral dissertation on Aristotle, but at the same time he engages with post-modern thought and has written on the works
Thinking Outside the Framework: Reflections on a Liberal Arts Education
It is likely that the words “Liberal Arts Education Panel” have been swimming through your subconscious as of late. These words were printed onto pretty paper flyers placed around campus within your easy view; they made the difficult but certain journey through cyberspace – presumably from the P98a admin building, in the form of magical
Perspectivalism Without Relativism
This post originally appeared on Public Seminar. Republished with their kind permission. Earlier this month, Susan Henking, President of Shimer College (my alma mater), wrote for Public Seminar what she called “my educated hope for Shimer and for liberal education,” a hope “rooted in a criticism of the ways we have been commodified, [forced to] meet
Discussing Dialogues: Why Plato wrote them, and why we read them
I am surprised that it took me this long to figure out just who exactly this “Plato” guy was. Growing up, I heard the names “Plato”, “Socrates”, and “Aristotle” often, usually in relation to one another, but did not understand what these names contributed to Western philosophy and science. Until recently, the mention of one
From Chaos to Cosmos: the history of the Universe as we know it: The Beauty of Sky Observation
On May 8, Bard College Berlin had the opportunity to welcome Noam Libeskind, a researcher from the “Leibniz-Institut für Astrophysik Potsdam,” for a guest lecture titled “From Chaos to Cosmos: the history of the Universe as we know it.” Invited by Professor Michael Weinman for the Early Modern Science core course, Noam introduced some basic
Early Modern Science in Dresden
The BA2 students of Bard College Berlin ventured on quite the field trip for their core class History and Philosophy of Science: Early Modern Science on March 8. Led by Professor Michael Weinman, we visited the Mathematisch-Physikalischer Salon in Dresden – home of some of Europe’s first scientific and astronomical instruments. The Mathematisch-Physikalischer Salon (Royal