Friday, April 24, 1998

Philosophers Rule OK!
By Harriet Baber ([email protected])

Bertrand Russell reports that one of the Pre-Socratics cornered the olive oil market and made a fortune just to show that philosophers weren't just impractical star-gazers.

I kept telling this to conscripts in the required logic course I teach. But just try convincing a Business Major that learning how to do proofs in the propositional calculus develops strategic thinking skills that have practical value and may even have a positive effect on the bottom line.

Being an empiricist however I decided to put my money where my mouth was and buy stock -- something I'd never done before (though we had a brokerage account for stock we inherited).

Around this time my husband discovered a great website that sold books called Amazon.com. This seemed an eminently logical way of doing business so I searched the web for a site on investing, found the Motley Fool, and looked up Amazon. Shares were $18 which seemed ok --still, never having done such a Foolish thing before, we were trembling as we called our broker and asked how to go about buying 100 shares of this Amazon thing.

The rest is history -- I got hooked. And, in defense of my profession, make bold to say that we haven't lost money yet: my good picks are heading for Plato's Heaven of Forms and my biggest goofs are merely flat. It's especially gratifying that my colleagues have also discovered Amazon and now don't even bother going to the university book store: every day there are piles of cartons from Amazon stacked by our mailboxes in the departmental office.

So don't sweat it if your kid announces that he plans to major in philosophy and support your local philosopher!

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