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Editorial

Sports and Thoughts

by Rick Lewis

Mens sana in corpore sano! A healthy mind in a healthy body has always been the ideal of philosophers, at least in theory. Aristotle put his money where his mouth was by organizing gymnastics classes at his Lyceum, and Chinese and Japanese thought has always had a physical expression in Tai Chi and Kung Fu, for instance. Most philosophers, though, have tended to pay lipservice to the importance of physical health while pursuing knowledge by the route of vast quantities of stimulants, hours in stuffy libraries and (like Descartes) staying in bed until midday. My own earliest recollection of organised sports is of shivering miserably in the cold drizzle on a quagmire of a soccer field, swapping gossip with the other eight-year old intellectuals. Once every half hour or so the games master would jog over and say “What’s this – a mothers’ meeting? Run around a bit.

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