• Book Review,  Classical Studies,  My Ramblings

    My Thoughts on Aristotle’s On the Soul

    Title: On the Soul (De Anima) Author: Aristotle translated by J. A. Smith Published:. Preamble It was the summer of 1983 that I walked over to the Ohio State Fair from the trailer park where I lived.  The newest edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica had just released, and they had a booth.  With my love of books, living on my own, and just a few days into the ripe wise age of twenty, I was easily convinced to take a loan and purchase a library.  This collection consisted of a thirty-volume encyclopedia, a fifty-four-volume set of Great Books of the Western World, a three-volume Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, and a twenty-one-volume collection of the Annals of America.  Since then, I have lugged these 108 books from one end of the country to the other.  I have never regretted this purchase. This collection was my Wikipedia.  It gave me incite into the world around me.  The Great Books, encyclopedia, and the dictionary I have used consistently over the years.  The Annals, for some reason, have been referenced or read very rarely, some volumes not at all.  But, to get back to my topic, Aristotle.  Two books, in this collection, are dedicated to his…

  • Classical Studies

    Creationism and Its Critics in Antiquity

    By: David Sedley 2007 So how did this book end up on my reading list?  In my journey to find other adults to discuss the classics and how they pertain to modern issues I discovered this book and other resources.  I started my quest by asking friends and family, this then expanded to social groups, and business acquaintances.  One of the librarians was wondering why anybody would want to read that old stuff for fun, it was bad enough she had to read it in college.  One day I was talking to one of my customers, (I own a board game store), he is a professor at University of Cincinnati and he informed me that they have a really good classics department and often host classics presentations that are open to the public.  After checking the schedule online I found when the next presentation was.  I made it a point to be there.  The guest speaker was Dr. Athena Kirk on “The Semantics of Showcase in Herodotus’ Histories”.  In preparation to meet this presenter, I looked up the professor online to see if she had any books that I could read beforehand.  I did not find any, but I found…