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Instructor
Your instructor
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Bill |
I am Bill Uzgalis, an Associate
Professor in the Philosophy Department at Oregon State University. I have
a doctorate in Philosophy from Stanford University. I have many interests
in philosophy, but I work primarily in the history of philosophy. I have
published a number of papers on John Locke, some of those papers inform
the material which you will be learning. I am also interested in computers
and education. I am presently serving as the Associate Editor of the
American Philosophical Association 's Computer Use in Philosophy
Newsletter and I have some experience with on-line education. I
built a web site -- the Great Voyages web site -- to accompany the regular
OSU version of Phl. 302 and have been experimenting with integrating
on-line tools into courses. One really interesting effect of the advent
of the Great Voyages web site to the class was that students began talking
about the course as a voyage, a voyage back in time, and talking of
themselves as voyagers and have regularly been referring to me as Captain
Bill.
I confess I like the Great Voyages metaphor. Not only is it one which
was employed in the era we are studying, but it focuses our attention on
seeing things for the first time and trying to grapple with understanding
what we are seeing. This is, of course, not entirely true about me. I
have read these books and taught this course many times now. Still, in
some ways books are like places. One of the pleasures of teaching a
course like this is being able to visit those places often visited before,
and to always come away having discovered something new.
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