Ernie got to play on grass under the big sky at Wrigley Field, before they conformed and added lights and night games. We'll play on Zoom-CoPhi first (a triple-header), then Democracy in America (a night game).
Back before COVID shut us down last March, we had a campus to roam. Haven't been there in quite a while, but I'm actually about to hit the highway so I can go and Zoom from my office. In "normal" times, on a clear 60+ degree day in January such as this promises to be, I'd introduce my new students to the peripatetic way of philosophizing on Day One.
So maybe today I'll strap on the iPhone chest-mount and take them for a remote ramble. We'll see.
In any event, I'll again urge us all to find our own piece of turf and sky each day. I guarantee it will improve our experience of the course. As Chris Orlet reminds, in Gymnasiums of the Mind: Solvitur Ambulando, "it is solved by walking"--for pretty much any it.
Nearly every philosopher-poet worth his salt has voiced similar sentiments. Erasmus recommended a little walk before supper and “after supper do the same.” Thomas Hobbes had an inkwell built into his walking stick to more easily jot down his brainstorms during his rambles. Jean- Jacques Rousseau claimed he could only meditate when walking: “When I stop, I cease to think,” he said. “My mind only works with my legs.” Søren Kierkegaard believed he’d walked himself into his best thoughts. In his brief life Henry David Thoreau walked an estimated 250,000 miles, or ten times the circumference of earth. “I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits,” wrote Thoreau, “unless I spend four hours a day at least – and it is commonly more than that – sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields absolutely free from worldly engagements.” Thoreau’s landlord and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson characterized walking as “gymnastics for the mind...”
"Gymnastics for the mind" could just be another name for philosophy, which I follow William James in defining simply as "an unusually stubborn effort to think clearly." And sometimes, philosophy is an equally stubborn effort to stop over-thinking. Woody Allen's character (in Manhattan was it, Ed?) said the brain is our most over-rated organ.
Another baseball sage, Johnny Damon, once said that thinking too much only hurts the team. "Ninety percent mental"? We'll see about that too.
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