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Articles

The Philosophy Professor & The Holy Book of Baseball

Chris Christensen tells a story of contradictory rules and faith broken and restored.

“If you look closely enough at a rule, the cosmos will appear in all its physical, metaphysical, moral and spiritual aspects, presenting you a life’s work.”
– Ted Cohen

Ted Cohen, a philosophy professor at the University of Chicago, was a fan of baseball and a student of its rule book. More than a student, he considered The Official Rules of Major League Baseball a divine document.

Bertrand Russell once wrote, “Mathematics, I believe, is the chief source of the belief in eternal and exact truth… In Plato, St Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Descartes, Spinoza, and Kant there is an intimate blending of religion and reasoning, of moral aspiration with logical admiration of what is timeless… which comes from Pythagoras.” (A History of Western Philosophy, 1945).

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