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Page 30 text:
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George B. Burch The Tufts Philosophy Club has described Professor of Philosophy George Burch in the following manner: “The personality and knowledge of Dr. Burch has long made the Philosophy Department at Tufts unique. With the un¬ fortunate tendency of modern philosophy to be dominated by logical positivism and linguistic analysis, Dr. Burch’s interests are truly refreshing. He combines a wide knowledge of the cultures of the world with a great inter est in philosophy as a whole.” This statement is typical of many made by Tufts students who have been inspired by Professor Burch’s challenging and exciting approach to his subject matter, an approach which has led to the great popularity of his surveys of Western, Far Eastern, and Near Eastern Thought. A graduate of Harvard University, Professor Burch taught at the College of Idaho before coming to Tufts in 1946. He was chairman of the Philosophy Department for several years before stepping down this year. Dr. Burch plans to make this his last year of teaching, and in com¬ menting on his years at Tufts he said, “I found the character and competence of my colleagues in the faculty and char¬ acter and competence of my students both very gratifying. In general my students have been excellent and some have been outstanding so that teaching here has been a very rewarding experience for me.” In speaking about the quality of Tufts students over the years, he noted, “I have had out¬ standing students recently, and some shortly after I came here,” so that while the face of the university has changed a great deal in the past twenty years, he sees no really signifi¬ cant change in the quality of the student body during this period. Dr. Burch points out that he views the relationship of the teacher to the student to be “something analogous to a paternal relationship. As the parent hands on life to his children, so the teacher hands on a cultural tradition to his students.” Professor Burch also sees unique problems in the teaching of philosophy because “it is not just the teaching of subject matter as in other fields, but the teaching of values which have to be appreciated.” For this reason, he always tries to elicit vigorous student discussion of course material, and emphasizes the importance of close student-teacher con¬ tacts outside of the classroom situation. Dr. Burch is also aware of the possibility of the mature philosophic mind imposing its credos upon the relatively untutored mind of the student. Nevertheless, he sees no way of avoiding “teaching what I believe, even in history of philosophy courses where I only teach those philosophers whom I think are important.” When asked about the role of the philosopher in influencing the direction of contemporary society, Professor Bruch re¬ plied that he saw little hope of any philosopher causing any meaningful change in the values of his own society. “In past times philosophers have had very little influence on their contemporaries, but have had overwhelming influence on the thought and values of future times.” However, he refused to speculate on the future influence of any twentieth century philosopher. “In speculating about what we don’t know, we can only go by analogy with what we do know, but that doesn’t mean the analogy will necessarily be carried out. Therefore, one cannot calculate which of our modern philoso¬ phers will have the greatest future influence.” Professor Burch’s main fields of interest are pre-Socratic and early Medieval philosophy, but he has lately turned to the study of the Indian philosophy of Vedanta. After leaving Tufts, he plans to devote much of his time to the completion of a book entitled The Search for the Absolute Contemporary Vedanta. The entire Tufts community will miss Professor Burch. We shall remember him for the wisdom of his words such as these about the role of the university: “Extending the horizon of thought is the university’s most significant con¬ tribution to the student’s education. It cannot teach him how to think — he must bring that with him; but it can give him things to think about.” We thank Professor Burch for giving so many of us so much to think about. 24
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Page 29 text:
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“an engineer is a person who is oriented to¬ ward the application of his knowledge for generally social purposes and civilized activi¬ ties as opposed to artistic activities,” he does believe that “in designing something an engineer should consider whether a building is handsome as well as sound, whether an aircraft is beautiful as well as efficient.” In order to accomplish this, the engineer “must have a knowledge of human society which can be achieved by a mixture of course work in the humanities and fundamental human curiosity.” It is in this capacity that a contact with the liberal arts is relevant to the engineer’s education. In fact, Professor Batteau believes that it is important that the engineering student not pass up his oppor¬ tunity to gain a liberal education at Tufts since “it is probably easier to objectively analyze social conditions through the medium of course material than by living in society.” It is apparent that Professor Batteau is a man deeply concerned with the problem of communication. Since it is commonplace to say that most of the world’s problems have their root in a lack of communication we must wish him well in his work. Teachers must of course be able to communicate with their students in order to be effective. They might do well to keep in mind this final bit of advice from Professor Batteau: “The better the signal to noise ratio is, the better the educational process will go. 23
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