{"id":9844,"date":"2012-03-20T13:57:09","date_gmt":"2012-03-20T13:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/03\/20\/philosophy-superman-and-richard-c-potter\/"},"modified":"2012-03-20T13:57:09","modified_gmt":"2012-03-20T13:57:09","slug":"philosophy-superman-and-richard-c-potter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/03\/20\/philosophy-superman-and-richard-c-potter\/","title":{"rendered":"Philosophy, Superman, and Richard C. Potter"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was pleased to hear from Patrick Kurp of Anecdotal Evidence<\/a> this morning.  He inquired:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

About four or five years ago you wrote about an American writer and thinker, perhaps an academic philosopher, who published, I believe, two books and seemed to disappear. You had difficulty finding information about him online. I believe you said he had an interest in East Asian thought. His \u201ccareer\u201d was eccentric by conventional standards and he seemed to be something of a loner.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Then I remembered a post of mine <\/a>which begins:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

This post examines Richard C. Potter's solution to the problem of reconciling creatio ex nihilo<\/em> with ex nihilo nihil fit<\/em> in his valuable article, "How To Create a Physical Universe Ex Nihilo<\/em>," Faith and Philosophy<\/strong>, vol. 3, no. 1, (January 1986), pp. 16-26. (Potter appears to have dropped out of sight, philosophically speaking, so if anyone knows what became of him, please let me know. The Philosopher's Index<\/em> shows only three articles by him, the last of which appeared in 1986.) <\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I don't know whether Potter<\/a> is the man Kurp had in mind, but the former does satisfy part of Kurp's description.  In any event, the Richard Potter story is an interesting one.  <\/span><\/p>\n

I recall talking to him, briefly, in the summer of 1981 at Brown University.  I was a participant in Roderick Chisholm's National Endowment for the Humanities  Summer Seminar, and Potter, who I believe had recently completed his Ph.D. at Brown, sat in on a few sessions.  My impression was he that he was unable to secure a teaching position.  I also recall a slightly derogatory comment I made about the Midwest and  how one might have to go there to find employment.  Potter's mild-mannered reply was to the effect that he preferred the Midwest over other geographical regions.  His name stuck in my mind probably because of a paper on the paradox of  analysis he co-authored with Chisholm and because of  the F & P article mentioned above.  See here<\/a>.  But then he dropped out of  philosophical sight.<\/span><\/p>\n

A few years back, I did a search and he turned up again as a George Reeves and Superman aficionado.  So here<\/a> is part of the rest of the Potter story.  Here<\/a>  is Potter's George Reeves site.<\/span><\/p>\n

A checkered<\/a> career, his.<\/span><\/p>\n

I too enjoyed the Superman series while growing up in the '50s.   Some thoughts of mine on George Reeves are in Superman: The Moral of the Story<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was pleased to hear from Patrick Kurp of Anecdotal Evidence this morning.  He inquired: About four or five years ago you wrote about an American writer and thinker, perhaps an academic philosopher, who published, I believe, two books and seemed to disappear. You had difficulty finding information about him online. I believe you said … Continue reading “Philosophy, Superman, and Richard C. Potter”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[196,92,203],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-americana","category-autobiographical","category-questers-and-other-oddballs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9844\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}