Exam 1 Study Guide

1. Name two of the ways you can earn a base in our class. (See "course requirements" & other info in the sidebar & on the syllabus)

2. How many bases must you earn, for each run you claim on the daily scorecard?

3. How do you earn your first base in each class?

4. Can you earn bases from the daily quiz if you're not present?

5. How can you earn bases on days when you're not present?

6. What should you write in your daily personal log?

7. Suppose you came to class one day, turned on the computer/projector and opened the CoPhi site, had 3 correct answers on the daily quiz, and had posted a comment, a discussion question,  and an alternate quiz question before class. How many runs would you claim in your personal log and on the scorecard that day?

8. How many bases do you get for posting a short, relevant weekly essay of at least 250 words?

9. What are Dr. Oliver's office hours? Where is his office? What is his email address?
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DR, Intro
10. What approach to the story of philosophy does Anthony Gottlieb say he aims to take in The Dream of Reason?

11. When was western science created?

12. How did William James define philosophy?

13. What's distinctive about philosophical thinking?

14. What is the sequel to The Dream of Reason?
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FL 1-2

15. What "remarkable phrase" was the catalyst for Kurt Andersen in writing Fantasyland?

16. Who coined "truthiness"?

17. Why does Andersen think Americans are so fantasy-prone?

18. What two big ideas of Martin Luther's set the stage for "Fantasyland"?

Peripatetic philosophy - Gymnasiums of the Mind...
1. What were Aristotle's followers called?

2. Who said his mind only worked with his legs?

3. Whose mentor called walking "gymnastics for the mind"?

4. Who had a "Sand-walk"?

5. How much does the average American walk?

6. Name a city with a "Philosophers' Walk".

FL 3-4
7. What was Sir Walter Raleigh's dream and fantasy, and what did he help invent?

8. By what has American civilization been shaped, according to historian Daniel Boorstin?

9. What English Enlightenment philosopher said humans tend to notice instances that confirm their prior superstitions and opinions but ignore ("neglect and pass by") those that do not?

10. Is America's founding mythology, the first nonnative new Americans who mattered were who?

11. What did the early Puritans predict was immanent?

DR 1-2

1. Who labelled the early 6th & 5th century philosophers "PreSocratics," and what did they invent?

2. Aristotle said the Milesians were the first what?

3. Why does Gottlieb say Thales was not simply silly to suggest that H2O is the origin and essence of everything? OR, What must we do in order to refute him?

4. What essential facet of scientific thinking did Anaximander's work exemplify?

5. What famous poetic image do we associate with Pythagoras?

6. What was a good Pythagorean supposed to study?

7. What did Bertrand Russell, echoing Pythagoras and Plato, consider the mind's "highest good"?

8. How does Gottlieb think Aristotle was unfair to the Pythagoreans in his interpretation of their claim that numbers are the principles of all things?

FL 5-6
9. What made Anne Hutchinson "so American"?

10. How was freedom of thought in early America different from that of Europe in the 17th century?

11. Did most people in New England believe in witches, during the infamous Salem witch trials?

12. What's Protestantism's enduring influence?

DR 3-5. 
1. How does Gottlieb think Heraclitus would reply to Aristotle's complaint about his ambiguous syntax?

2. Why did Heraclitus compare us all to beasts, drunkards, sleepers, and children? What did he say we fail to grasp?

3. What did fire symbolize, for Heraclitus?

4. Who were Parmenides' famous teacher and student?

5. What was Parmenides' surprising claim (aside from the idea that everything is eternal)?

6. How did Parmenides say language and thought connect to the world?

7. What was Zeno trying to discredit, with his famous paradoxes of motion?

8. What did Aristotle say Zeno invented, and how did his aim differ from Socrates'?

9. How does Gottlieb solve the Achilles paradox?
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FL 7-8
10. What did pious congregants begin to do in The Great Awakening?

11. Who popularized for Christianity in America the idea of being "born again" ?

12. Who told his nephew to "question with boldness the existence of a god"?

13. Who said the Framers forgot to mention God in the Constitution?

14. What does Sapere aude! mean, and whose slogan was it?

DR 6-7

1. What was Empedocles' legendary "Faustian end"?

2. What did Empedocles identify as the universal elements whose interplay accounts for all phenomena including sexual attraction?  And, which of "our" elements does Gottlieb compare them to?

3. What fundamental principles of modern biology did Empedocles anticipate?

4. What was Empedocles' favorite scientific interest?

5. What did Anaxagoras bring to Athens, and what was his nickname?

6. Of what was Anaxagoras accused, like Socrates thirty years later?

7. How was Anaxagoras less extreme than Parmenides, with respect to reason and perception?

8. Was Anaxagoras a mind-matter dualist?

FL 9-10

9. What "legend" about Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence did Ronald Reagan report as fact?

10. What was the 19th century "Woodstock for American Christianity"?

11. What French observer said no country in the world was as fanatically Christian as America?

12. The most interesting thing about Joseph Smith is what?

DR 8-9
1. How was Democritus remembered after his death, and why?

2. Why did early Christians oppose atomism?

3. Name two other early atomists.

4. What idea did Democritus take over from Leucippus?

5. When did ancient atomism become a mature scientific view?

6. What ability was most valued in Periclean Athens?

7. For whom was the term sophistes, Sophists, reserved in the time of Protagoras, Gorgias, Hippias, et al, and what subjects did they teach?

8. What were Plato's & Aristotle's stated objections to the Sophists?

9. What playwright satirized Socrates and the Sophists indiscriminately?

10. Which Sophist embraced subjectivity and said "Man is the measure of all things"?

FL 11-12

11. What did Arthur C. Clarke say about technology?

12. What's the upside of homeopathy?

13. Who invented a religion that said pain, suffering, and disease are not real? What is that religion?

14. How did the California Gold Rush alter Americans' view of reality?

15. How are Americans like ants and grasshoppers?

DR 10

1. What was Socrates' "faith"?

2. How does Gottlieb account for Socrates' appeal to the "high society" of Athens, given his humble background and poverty?

3. What did Alcibiades see in Socrates?

4. with what request did Socrates typically commence a philosophical conversation? What was his method called?

5. Why were the defenders of Athenian democracy uneasy about Socrates?

6. In what way did the Oracle mean that Socrates was wise? Did Socrates accept the Oracle's authority at face value?

7. What was Socrates' basic motive for philosophizing?

8. Why did Socrates say it's unwise to fear death?

9. In what different ways were Socrates and Plato "unworldly"?

10. What form of life did Socrates say is not worth living? OR, Do the "authentically Socratic" dialogues usually settle on a final conclusion?

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FL 13-14

11. What do religious and conspiratorial explanations have in common?

12. What was the Freemasons' Secret, according to Ben Franklin?

13. How did many Northerners account for their side's early setbacks in the Civil War?

14. Who did Mark Twain blame for "measureless harm" that reversed southern progress and led to the Civil War?

LH
1. What kind of conversation did Socrates consider a success?

2. What was wisdom, for Socrates?

3. With what Platonic theory does the parable of the cave connect?

DR
4. In Plato's Symposium, what does Socrates say Diotima taught him about love?

5. When did Plato say humanity would see better days?

6. What nagged Plato about the academic way of life?

7. What three classes did Plato propose for his ideal republic? 

8. What analogy does Socrates/Plato drawn between the parts of the city and the parts of the soul?

9. What must happen in order to bring about Plato's ideal city?

FL 15, 16
10. Who called himself a transparent eyeball?

11. What extraordinary (and false) astronomical discovery was reported and widely believed in 1835?

12. What fundamental Fantasyland mindset was exploited and illustrated by the early career of P.T. Barnum?

13. What event celebrating the 400th anniversary of Columbus's arrival in the new world featured more than a dozen temporary, disposable, full-size facsimile neoclassical buildings?

LH 2
1. What did Aristotle mean by "one swallow doesn't make a summer"?

2. In Raphael's School of Athens, who reaches out towards the world in front of him?

3. What does eudaimonia mean?

4. How can we increase our chance of eudaimonia?

5. Eudaimonia can only be achieved in relation to what?

6. What is "truth by authority"?

7. How is authority hostile to the spirit of philosophy?

FL 17-18
8. What theme park opened in Brooklyn at the turn of the 20th century?

9. Who was Robert Love Taylor and what did he lecture about?

10. What 1915 movie contributed to the growth of the KKK? 

11. What do southerners turn away from, according to The Mind of the South?

12. What was foolish, according to the modernist New Theology of the early 20th century?

13. How did Christian modernists reconcile scripture with science?

14. What happened in Dayton TN in the summer of 1925, and what did Clarence Darrow say about "what Tennessee had done"?

1. What did Aristotle set up in 335 BC?

2. What was dearer to Aristotle than Plato?

3. What was the fundamental difference between Aristotle and Plato, and how was it reflected in his attitude towards the "cave"?

4. What three things did Aristotle say are always involved in change?

5. What was Aristotle's name for God, and what did he say He thinks about?

6. How does Aristotle's view of the fundamental type of existence contrast with Plato's theory of Forms?


FL 19-20
7. How did [does] movies narrow the gap between fantasy and reality?

8. How did [does] advertizing use fantasies?

9. Who did some in Orson Welles' radio audience think his fictional Martians might be?

10. What increased by orders of magnitude in the first three decades of the 20th century, with what result?