Jon McGinnis is a Greco-Arabist who also
has interest in medieval Latin science, philosophy and theology.
He received a Masters 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 philosophy department and the Center for
Middle Eastern Studies.
As a graduate student he was a research fellow at Harvard University
for a year in the department of the History of Science. He also
was a Fulbright scholar to Egypt, where he studied at both the American
University in Cairo and the University of Cairo.
Since becoming a professor at the University of Missouri, St. Louis
he has received a University of Missouri Research Board Award as
well as National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Research Stipend,
two NEH Fellowships and has been elected to Membership at the Institute
for Advanced Study. He is also on the executive council of the Society
for Medieval and Patristic Philosophy. In addition to being the
philosophy department’s resident classicist and medievalist,
he is also a fellow in the Center for International Studies.
His dissertation,
Time and Time Again: A Study of Aristotle
and Ibn Sînâ’s Temporal Theories examines
Aristotle’s and the Muslim Aristotelian Avicenna’s conceptions
of time. In addition to his interest in ancient and medieval temporal
theory, he has also recently completed translating Avicenna’s
treatise on kinematics, or the theory of motion and what is required
for motion, and is beginning work on a book to be titled
Avicennan
Kinematics: Its Sources, Content and Influence, which in fact
will be the first survey of medieval, Arabic kinematics. He also
has done work on medieval Islamic conceptions of science and modal
theories as well.
He has published articles in the
American Catholic Philosophical
Quarterly, Medieval Philosophy and Theology, The Journal for Patristic,
Medieval and Renaissance Studies, The Journal of the History of
Philosophy, KronoScope, The Modern Schoolman, Apeiron and
Arabic
Sciences and Philosophy. He also has several articles appearing
as chapters in books dedicated to Islamic philosophy and science.
He is both a contributor to and editor of a collection of articles
on Avicenna, titled
Interpreting Avicenna: Science and Philosophy
in Medieval Islam (Leiden: Brill, 2004). In collaboration with
David C. Reisman he is bringing out the first anthology of classical
Arabic philosophy to be published by Hackett Press in 2005.
He has been interviewed by the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
concerning recent scandals in the Catholic Church and the Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation about the scientific heritage of Islam.
He has also given public lectures on Islam and the legal status
of woman and children within Islam at the request of the National
Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges.
All in all, Jon thinks that life is pretty good, but better with
a cup of coffee.
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Last update: 3/15/06
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