Jon McGinnis, ‘No’ing That You Don’t Know: Ibn Sīnā on Meno’s Paradox and Its implications for the Sciences

Jon McGinnis (University of Missouri, St. Louis) visits U of T for a research talk on ‘No’ing That You Don’t Know: Ibn Sīnā on Meno’s Paradox and Its implications for the Sciences. Join in person on Monday, February 26 at 4 pm in the Great Hall at CMS or virtually via Zoom (https://utoronto.zoom.us/j/83468869556).

Biography

Jon McGinnis is a Greco-Arabist who also has an interest in Medieval Latin science, philosophy and theology. He received an M.A. in church history from the University of North Texas (1991) and a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania (2000), where he worked jointly in the Department of Philosophy and the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. As a graduate student, he was a research fellow at Harvard University in the Department of the History of Science, as well as a Fulbright Scholar to Egypt. Since coming to UMSL, he has received numerous grants and fellowships from organizations such as the University of Missouri Research Board Award, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Andrew Mellon Foundation, as well as having been a member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He is currently the secretary-treasurer of the Society for Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy. In addition to numerous articles and chapters on various aspects of ancient and medieval physics and metaphysics, he is the author of Avicenna (Oxford University Press), translator and editor of Avicenna’s The Physics of the Healing (Brigham Young University Press) and, with David C. Reisman, translator of Classical Arabic Philosophy: An Anthology of Sources (Hackett). All in all, Jon thinks that life is pretty good but is better with a cup of coffee.