September 23, 1982

Wesleyan University Professor of Philosophy Louis Mink gave a Philosopher’s Holiday lecture on “Modes of Comprehension” in the Josselyn House living room. In an article in The Miscellany News, “Comprehending Mink,” Glenn Edelman ’87 said, “Mink introduced comprehension, ‘the ubiquitous phenomenon,’ by outlining its three modes: theoretical, configurative and categoreal (not categorical)…. Mink believes a person should have an intellectual personality largely characterized by one mode. A liberal education allows a student to experiment with all three. This is what makes college an ‘ivory tower of Babel.‘”

Professor Mink wrote on theories of perception in Mind, History and Dialect: The Philosophy of R. G. Collingwood (1968), and as a Joycean he published A Finnegans Wake Gazetteer in 1978.