As you’re beginning your research, you will want to think about what type of sources your assignment requires, or what types of sources best fit your research needs. Sources come from a variety of places, and this page is meant to help you get started in your searching. Be sure to Ask a Librarian if you need more help getting started!
Here are just a few of the many books we have in the library, check out the OneSearch on the Library’s homepage to start searching!
What the Tortoise Taught Us by What the Tortoise Taught Us offers a lively, concise journey through western philosophy that explores the lives of major philosophers, their ideas, and how their thinking continues to influence our lives today. Using a chronological approach, Burton Porter shows how various philosophers address life's big questions. By putting each philosopher and their ideas into historical context, he helps us understand how certain ideas developed based on the thinking of the time, and how those ideas have influenced our modern perceptions. Using familiar language and interesting anecdotes, Porter provides us with an extremely readable and lively history that takes themes that characterize each age to reflect on the greater human experience. The book includes the philosophies and lives of the ancient philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, and continues through time into the Middle Ages with St. Thomas Aquinas, to the Renaissance, and beyond. Porter explores the metaphysics of Descartes and Hobbs; the epistemology of Hume and Berkeley, and the ethics of Kant and Mill among others. Finally he concludes with contemporary issues, including racism, abortion, and modern feminism. Porter is able to explain these complex ideas in a clear, simple, and straightforward way. What the Tortoise Taught Us is a balanced and approachable look at life's basic questions through the eyes of the philosophers that have helped shape modern thought.
101 Philosophy Problems by Does Farmer Field really know his prize cow, Daisy, is in the field? When is an unexpected exam not wholly unexpected? Are all bachelors (really) unmarried? Martin Cohen's 101 Philosophy Problems, Fourth Edition introduces philosophy in an entertaining but informative and stimulating way. Using philosophical puzzles, conundrums and paradoxes he skilfully unwraps some of the mysteries of the subject, from what we know - or think we know - to brainteasing thought experiments about ethics, science and the nature of the mind. For the Fourth Edition there are many new problems, including Maxwell's Moving Magnets, Einstein Changes Train Times, and Zeno's Paradox of Place; as well as two brand new sections including puzzles such as Lorenz's Waterywheel, and the Battle for Fractal Farm, and perplexing ethical dilemmas. The book has been extensively revised to bring it up to date with new developments in philosophy and society. With an updated glossary of helpful terms and possible solutions to the problems at the end of the book, 101 Philosophy Problems is essential reading for anyone coming to philosophy for the first time.
The Oxford Companion to Philosophy by This is the most authoritative and engaging philosophical reference work in English. It gives clear and reliable guidance to all areas of philosophy and to the ideas of all notable philosophers from antiquity to the present day. The scope of the volume is not limited to English-languagephilosophy: it surveys the foremost philosophy from all parts of the world.A distinguished international assembly of more than two hundred contributors provide almost 2,000 alphabetically arranged entries which are not only instructive but also entertaining: they combine learning, lucidity, elegance, and wit. There are more than fifty extended entries of 3,000 words on themain areas of philosophy and the great philosophers: these include essays by Alasdair MacIntyre on the history of moral philosophy, Paul Feyerabend on the history of the philosophy of science, Jaegwon Kim on problems of the philosophy of mind, Richard Swinburne on problems of the philosophy ofreligion, David Charles on Aristotle, Peter Singer on Hegel, Anthony Kenny on Frege, and Anthony Quinton on philosophy itself.Short entries deal with key concepts (for instance, personal identity, time) doctrines (utilitarianism, holism), problems (the mind-body problem, the meaning of life), schools of thought (Marxist philosophy, the Vienna Circle), and practical issues (abortion, vegetarianism). Individual thinkerspast (Pythagoras, Confucius, Galileo, Goethe, Burke, Santayana, de Beauvoir, Radhakrishnan) and present (over 150 contemporary figures, such as Chomsky, Derrida, and Popper) are profiled, and eighty of them are depicted in black-and-white portraits. Interspersed throughout are short explanations ofparticular philosophical terms (qualia, supervenience, iff), puzzles (the Achilles paradox, the prisoner's dilemma), and curiosities (the philosopher's stone, slime). Every entry is accompanied by suggestions for further reading. A chronological chart of the history of philosophy is located at theend of the book, together with fourteen diagrams showing the structure of philosophy and the relations between its subjects and doctrines.This book will be an indispensable guide and a constant source of stimulation and enlightenment for anyone interested in abstract thought, the eternal questions, and the foundations of human understanding.
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