Through a friend's Facebook post, I learn that Bill Newton-Smith has died. Bill was one of the four people who interviewed and subsequently accepted me for a place at Balliol College, Oxford, to read Physics and Philosophy. Bill was the philosopher in the room, and was joined by Johanthan Hodby, Dave Wark, and David Brink, whose death I recently commented on.
As far as I remember, Bill asked one question in the interview, along the lines of "When I say something is red and you say something is red, how can we agree that we are talking about the same thing?" I remember giving some kind of answer based on sets of red things, and perhaps more physical argument based on wavelengths. I don't know how good an answer it was, but I was accepted as a Physics and Philosophy student. Actually, I think the acceptance was based almost entirely on my admission examination performance in maths and physics, which I later learned I completely aced. I also sat a general paper for the philosophy-based part of my admission, where I wrote a pseudish stream-of-consciousness set of answers, not really knowing how to answer essay-type questions. I suspect these were not read.
Anyway - I had Bill Newton-Smith for philosophy tutorials every week in the first term, and the subject was formal logic, which I enjoyed. I liked mostly the study into the extent that language is used to convey ideas more than the mathematical logic aspects which in the first semester were quite trivial. I enjoyed the tutorials and got the feeling that Bill liked the questions I asked about language. I found him fun, and intimidating.
At the end of the first term I went home for the vacations and did not want to return to University. A depression that I had not named as such was manifesting itself in a bleak and horrific way and I felt happier at home with my old friends. Though I had made friends at Uni, I didn't feel settled there, and I didn't feel at all prepared to go back. I didn't feel like I understood anything much, and had never learnt good study skills, having found school easy. My sympathetic tutors had no magic bullet, but the suggestion that I switch to straight Physics, which I tried, was a kind of mental reset to help me start again, and I suppose to some extent it worked. Well, at least I stayed at University. It meant no more philosophy tutorials with Bill Newton-Smith, and a lingering sense of failure.
His name, Bill, was short for William, as usual, and his middle initial was H., so he appeared on documents as W H Newton-Smith. I idly speculated that the inclusion of Newton in his name was in order not to be called "WH Smith" after the stationer.
I'm aware from the testimony of others who interacted with him in a more extended way than I did, that he was a fine man. RIP Bill.
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| Bill Newton Smith (from CEU news report) |
