Ted Richards, a lecturer in the Department of Philosophy, this month published Soccer and Philosophy: Beautiful Thoughts on the Beautiful Game, just in time for the World Cup. Richards edited this charming, often hilarious, collection of essays by soccerphile philosophers. In a recent review, Simon Kuper, co-author of Soccernomics, said that Soccer and Philosophy “is a delight, and it taught me more philosophy than I learned in my entire time at university.” He added, “At last we know which team Nietzsche would have supported, and why people care so much about the sport.” As Bill Shankly, the legendary former manager of the Liverpool Football Club, once said, “Some people think football [soccer] is a matter of life and death. I am very disappointed in that attitude. I can assure them it is much more serious than that.” Enough said.
Richards earned his Ph.D. from the Boston University and joined the UT Knoxville faculty in 2005. His current interests include the history of the philosophy of science, early modern natural philosophy (primarily the worldviews of Descartes and Newton), and axiology or the study of value.
Recent Publications
Richards, T., ed. (2010), Soccer and Philosophy, Open Court Publishing Co. (Chicago).
Richards, T. (2010), “Using Kinesthetic Activities to Teach Ptolemaic and Copernican Retrograde Motion,” Science & Education, DOI 10.1007/s11191-010-9265-8.
Richards, T. (2009), “Empty Philosophy of Science,” Metascience 18(2): 313-317.
Richards, T. (2008), “Killing One to Save Five: A Test of Two Hartman-Style Value Calculuses,” Journal of Formal Axiology 1: 187-205.
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