Accomplishments: Department of Philosophy

Maurice Finocchiaro (Philosophy) had one of his essays translated into French and published in the current issue of Revue des Questions Scientifiques. This is a Belgian journal published at the Université de Namur by the Société Scientifique de Bruxelles. Originally titled “The Trial of Galileo: Facts and Issues, Then and Now,” the French title of…
David Forman (Philosophy) published an essay, "Leibniz on Human Finitude, Progress, and Eternal Recurrence," in Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy from Oxford University Press.
Maurice A. Finocchiaro (Philosophy) has accepted an invitation to contribute a chapter for a festschrift honoring a historian named Sergio Pagano, who is a priest and the director of the “Vatican Secret Archive.” This is a repository of official documents that have religious, political, or administrative significance. Originally, the archive was…
Maurice Finocchiaro (Philosophy) has been notified by the home office of Oxford University Press that it has accepted his proposal for a “trade book” on the Galileo affair. Trade books are aimed at the general public, as distinct from textbooks and academic and technical books aimed at specialized audiences. The book plans to adapt for a general…
51ԹϺ Collegiate DECA Members recently received several awards at the Utah Collegiate DECA's annual Fall Leadership Conference (FLC). Collegiate DECA is a career and technical student organization formerly known as the Distributive Education Clubs of America. Among those receiving awards at the FLC were: Daniel Dinev (Accounting/Global…
Maurice Finocchiaro (Philosophy) has just published his fourteenth book, The Trial of Galileo: Essential Documents (Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 2014). It is a collection of the most important writings leading to the 1633 Inquisition's condemnation of Galileo, who was suspected of heresy for defending Copernicus's…
Maurice Finocchiaro (Philosophy) delivered a public lecture, "Galileo: Science, Religion, and Philosophy," at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London on July 8. This was part of a year-long series of lectures on "People Who Changed the World," which also includes lectures on Jesus, St. Paul, Luther, Muhammad, Socrates, Shakespeare, Isaac Newton,…
Maurice Finocchiaro (Philosophy) will give a talk, "The Galileo Affair: Facts and Issues, Then and Now," at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on June 6. Finocchiaro, MIT '64, will participate in the "Class Speaker Program," which is part of the 50th reunion of the MIT class of 1964.
Maurice Finocchiaro (Philosophy) just has published a book, The Routledge Guidebook to Galileo's Dialogue (Routledge--Taylor & Francis Group, 2013). It is a volume in a series called "Routledge Guides to the Great Books." The great book in question is Galileo Galilei's Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems, Ptolemaic and Copernican, whose…
Maurice Finocchiaro (Philosophy) is the author of Meta-argumentation: An Approach to Logic and Argumentation Theory, which was published in March by College Publications (London). It is volume 42 of their series of "Studies in Logic." The book deals with meta-arguments, which are arguments about arguments. As such, it provides a study of the…
Maurice Finocchiaro (Philosophy) gave a colloquium talk at the University of California, Berkeley, Center for Science, Technology, Medicine, and Society in February. It was titled "The Galileo Affair and the Berkeley Para-clericals." In 1633, Galileo was tried and condemned by the Inquisition for defending Copernicus' hypothesis of the earth's…
Todd Jones (Philosophy) recently was announced as a winner of the American Philosophical Association's "Best Op-Eds by Philosophers" contest. He won for his article, "Budgetary Hemlock," which appeared in the Boston Review. The article was about the importance of public funding for education in general and for philosophy in particular.