Gerry Callaghan
Extended Learning Coordinator

PhD, University of Western Ontario
MA, University of Western Ontario
BA, Concordia University

Office: HH 366
Extension: 35166
Email: gcallagh@uwaterloo.ca

Philosophy and Me
My favorite philosophical concept is that of the Leibnizian monad--the humble metaphysical atom that somehow manages to perceive and express the entire universe from the limited vantage point of its own little corner of reality.  Whether or not monads actually exist (they probably don't) they provide an apt metaphor for my experience in philosophy.  As an undergrad, I majored in program called "Western Society and Culture", offered through Concordia University's Liberal Arts College.  From this program, and from the minors in history and philosophy I pursued at the same time, it seemed to me that I was discovering an intellectual universe of such richness and variety that I could only be confirmed in the long standing suspicion that my high school teachers, who scarcely made mention of such a universe, were actually zombies.  As a graduate student at the University of Western Ontario, I was encouraged to narrow my perspective on this wide universe so as to accomplish various banal ends--completing my degree requirements and acquiring professional competencies, for example.  This I tried to do by confining my attention to a practically tractable research area.  I focused on Empiricist epistemologies in the Early Modern period, but, restless as always, I soon found myself gravitating towards topics in early analytic philosophy of language and logic.  The result of this drift was an ungainly PhD dissertation, exploring theories of concepts from the time of Hobbes, in the mid-seventeenth century, up until the groundbreaking logico-philosophical work of Gottlob Frege at the turn of the twentieth century.  As usual, my monadic impulses got the better of me.  

Since my years as a graduate student, I have kept the wide world of philosophy open to view through various research projects, but even more so through my teaching, which has taken me through areas and eras of philosophy that I never expected to explore.  In the process, I have enjoyed the good company of many interesting and interested undergraduate students.  It is thrilling to have a role, however small, in opening their eyes to the fascinations of philosophy.  As the Philosophy Department's Distance Education Coordinator, I now have the pleasure of helping extend this experience to even more students.  And I get to mess around with material ranging across the spectrum of our undergraduate curriculum--my monad runneth over!