Splash Biography

Have you ever noticed that words in Spanish and French often sound a lot like words in English? “Intelligence” in English is “intelligencia” in Spanish, and “actor” in English is “acteur” in French! At first, you may not think much of the similarity, but these words sound the same because English, Spanish, and French all have roots in the same parent language – Latin. In fact, the connections run deeper than that – with a keen eye, it’s possible to show that even different languages like Latin, Greek, Russian, Sanskrit, and even Persian and Hittite all have a common parent too, called “Proto-Indo-European,” that was spoken by early humans over 8000 years ago. So much can be done with just a few tricks and a little logic! In this class, we’ll use just common everyday words – no artifacts, field experiments, or archaeology – to reconstruct the Proto-Indo-European vocabulary, prove language relatedness, and glean insight into ancient religion, attitudes, and the history of ideas themselves. By the end of the course, students will develop an appreciation for the unique history embodied in the words we use every day.

Socrates said "The unexamined life is not worth living." In this course, we seek to examine why we do what we do, and how that relates to what ought to do (or ought not to, as the case may be). Killing a life to save twenty? Giving money to a homeless person? Stealing for a good cause? Though the answers to these questions may be unclear, we shall examine several moral frameworks that can be used to resolve these issues. By the end of the course, students will have a lens through which to interpret their own ethical dilemmas and begin the process of actually living better.