Doris Olin

[kathleen_dailey]

Doris Olin, who taught philosophy at York University's Glendon College, was a tremendously gifted thinker and scholar. When I was at Glendon, I took as many classes from her as I could arrange. I kept my final term paper on Pascal's Wager for many decades just so that I wouldn't forget our conversations and debates. Her teaching of symbolic logic and paradoxes permanently changed my way of thinking and reasoning, and was an important factor in my decision to apply to law school. I have no doubt that she made a similar impact on many other students who also remember her with respect and affection.

Comments

[misbegotten]

<3

It's so lovely to have found that kind of intellectual stimulation at university. My love affair with academia ended badly, but it was still quite a shock to discover that one of the scholars I worked with and admired had passed away far too young. I respected him a great deal and was surprised how strongly I reacted to learning he was gone. But the body of work and influence lives on!

[kathleen_dailey]

It's so lovely to have found that kind of intellectual stimulation at university.

Maybe it's due to sheer synchronicity--a random point in spacetime when a particularly intriguing theory or notion is communicated by an able teacher and understood by a receptive student. This happened to me maybe two or three times in total over all the years between kindergarten and post-grad. Not a very impressive statistic, sadly.