Philosophy Phriday: A Museum, Ants, and an APA Central to Remember

By Benjamin D. Blanchard

Every year, the American Philosophical Association Central Division Meeting features stellar presentations on philosophy by philosophers hailing from a wide range of subdisciplines. Applications are already under review for the APA Central next year. But only in very special years do philosophers come together for a behind-the-scenes tour of one of the nation’s premier natural history museums.

On February 24th, to close out the final day of the 2018 APA Central Division Meeting, a few dozen philosophers – faculty, graduate students, and children alike – gathered at the West Entrance of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. Their purpose? A special tour of the ants, insect collections, and other gems in honor of the one-year anniversary of the Philosophy Phridays series at The Daily Ant. Philosophy Phridays, a public philosophy outlet for contributed pieces at the intersection of ants and philosophy, hosts articles on wide-ranging topics including philosophy of mind, animal ethics, epistemology, philosophy of religion, rationality, and feminist philosophy. The guests in attendance reflected this diversity, and further showed that philosophy–and ants–are not just for adults.

Heading behind the scenes to the “Invertebrates” hallway on the third floor, the tour event – “Philosophy Phridays Phriends of the Phield” – kicked off with a visit to the Moreau AntLab. Here, guests were treated to an array of ants under a microscope, including spiny ants, trap-jaw ants, and turtle ants. Although there was only one microscope, the children reflected a perfect model of a sharing community, and the adults followed suit.

The energetic group then moved to the Collaborative Invertebrate Laboratories (CIL). In the CIL, museum staff members image collections using the auto-montage approach to produce beautiful, high-resolution images of a diverse range of insects and other not-so-creepy crawlies. The philosophers learned a bit about this process, but the most exciting features of the room were the cabinets filled with stunning insects, scorpions, tarantulas, and myriapods (centipedes/millipedes).

To close out the tour, everyone moved back out to the public portion of the museum, swung by the Bird Prep lab and the DNA Discovery lab, and then enjoyed a private, after-hours tour of the “Evolving Planet” exhibit. “Evolving Planet” takes visitors through our current knowledge of the evolution of life from 4.5 billion years ago to the present. It must be mentioned that some vertebrates, including dinosaurs and Sue the T. Rex, are featured in this exhibit, but naturally they were not the focus of the tour.

This writer may be biased, but from his epistemic standpoint, all of the guest philosophers came away from the Philosophy Phridays Phriends of the Phield event with an expanded appreciation of ants, other invertebrates, and the diversity of evolved life. Who knows what philosophical breakthroughs such a transformative experience may yield?

Philosophers attending the event: Gabriel Richardson Lear (University of Chicago), Kevin Timpe (Calvin College), Jonathan Lear (University of Chicago), Ryan Kemp (Wheaton College), Wendy Salkin (Harvard University), Kristen Irwin (Loyola University), Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa (University of British Columbia), Gretchen Ellefson (Northwestern University), Snackum T. Anteater, Lauren Leydon-Hardy (Northwestern University), Dustin Crummett (University of Notre Dame), Joshua Blanchard (UNC – Chapel Hill), and several children and adult guests. Jordan MacKenzie (NYU) and Julia Driver (Washington University in St. Louis) attended an earlier, afternoon tour.

Any philosopher interested in contributing to Philosophy Phridays may contact The Daily Ant or one of the Executive Producers of the series (Kathryn Pogin, Lauren Leydon-Hardy, and Joshua Blanchard).

All photography by Dr. Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa, who graciously agreed to take pictures during the event. Images used with permission by Dr. Ichikawa and those featured in the photographs.

Benjamin Blanchard is a PhD Candidate in the Committee on Evolutionary Biology at the University of Chicago and the Field Museum of Natural History. He is also the Editor-in-Chief of The Daily Ant, an online publication website dedicated to providing premier ant content for general consumption.