|
time to renew. The BRS exists to serve you by providing you with annual and other meetings, various publications and an online community, and the membership dues of the society enable the BRS to fulfill its function, so if you have not already paid your dues, we hope that you will do so now. iowa city, iowa. The weekend of June 1-3 marked the occasion of the 33rd Annual Meeting of the BRS, convening for the first time at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa. The Society extends its thanks to Gregory Landini, convener, for making the event possible and for seeing to it that the weekend went smoothly. This was the first time that the BRS annual meeting has made it to this part of the US, and a general sense of excitement about the venue accompanied the many fine talks. A complete report of the Annual Meeting will be published in the next issue of the BRS Quarterly. letter to the editor. Dear Editors: I was saddened to learn in the August 2005 Bertrand Russell Society Quarterly of the death of Whitfield Cobb. He was an extremely warm and engaging man who I met at several BRS annual meetings in the early 1990s. I was new to the Society then, and Cobb was one of the several people who helped me feel at home and convinced me that I was in the right place (despite being perhaps 20 years younger than most of the meeting attendees). He will be missed. Yours very sincerely, Peter Stonea brs life membership couple! The Bertrand Russell Society gained two new life members this past spring and its first life membership couple when Eberhard and Yvonne Jonath of Volketswil Switzerland became life members of the Society in March. Yvonne says that it was from reading his History of Western Philosophy that she first became impressed by Russell – for his rationalism, courage, humor, and personality. Eberhard says he admires Russell’s willingness to give up his scientific opinions when they were no longer well-grounded. Yvonne suggests a BRS meeting in Europe sometime, something that has been discussed now and then in the BRS but never acted on. We are grateful to the Jonaths for their generous gift and are delighted to have them as life members. and yet another life member. Michael Berumen has also become a life member of the Russell Society. Michael is a businessman and philosopher who lives in Southern California (Laguna Niguel) who has written a book on ethics called Do No Evil: Ethics with Application to Economics Theory and Business. Michael has wondered about a BRS meeting in California, another prospect that has been discussed now and again in the BRS. As with the Jonaths, we are grateful to Michael for his generous gift and pleased to have him as a life member of the BRS. new society honorary member. David Henehan reports that after months of searching for Tariq Ali, David finally found him and notified him of the Society’s offer of an honorary membership. Ali has accepted the offer and so is the newest honorary member of the Society. Tariq Ali is a noted author, filmmaker, BBC commentator and historian who regularly contributes to the Guardian, Counterpunch, and the London Review of Books. We feel privileged to have him as an honorary member of the BRS. get on the map! Curious where other BRS members live? Thanks to Bob Riemenschneider, you can now find out! The BRS map site is online at http://frapper.com/bertrandrussellsociety. Once there and enrolled, you can add your name – and a photo if you like – to the BRS map along with the 29 members who are already on it. A tiny balloon marks your spot on the map. (It marks your movements too, if you travel.) Clicking on your balloon expands it and displays your name, photo, and message to the BRS community. Clicking on any area of the map allows you to zoom into a location almost to street level. Besides being useful, the website contains such moving tributes to intellectualism and free thought as “Philosophy is mathematics”, “Mathematics is philosophy” and “Warren, move your balloon, you’re crowding me!” apropos of the map, a pipe-smoking Bertie was spotted in the (Frappr) vicinity of Pembroke Road, East of Ham and Northwest of London. The same Bertie was subsequently reported wandering around Utah in an empty field West of Route 50. According to our sources, Bertie appears to be lost and resorting to strong language. eastern and central division meetings of the apa. The Bertrand Russell Society hosted sessions of talks at both the Eastern and Central APA meetings this past year. An account of the sessions at the Eastern meeting (December 27-30) can be found in the Traveler’s Diary in the back of this issue. This year’s Central meeting (April 26-29), housed within the gilt walls of the Palmer Hotel in Chicago, included a broad mix of talks, with Stephen Mumford (University of Nottingham) speaking on “Russell’s Defense of Idleness”, Nikolay Milkov (Bielefeld University) on “The Joint Program of Russell and Wittgenstein: March-November 1912”, and Eric Wielenberg (DePauw University) speaking on “Bertrand Russell and C. S. Lewis: Two Peas in a Pod”, with Nikolay Milkov responding. Our friends in HEAPS (History of Early Analytic Philosophy Society) sponsored a related session of talks there, with Paul Pojman (Towson University) speaking on “From Mach to Carnap: A Tale of Confusion”, Aaron Preston (Malone College) speaking on “Scientism and the Emergence of Analytic Philosophy”, and Giancarlo Zanet (University of Palermo) speaking on “Pragmatism, the A Priori and Analyticity: C. I. Lewis and Quine”.
this issue's treasurer’s reports. In order to correct for some past inaccuracies, we are republishing several past BRS treasurer’s reports.
|