Monthly Archives: March 2015

The framers of the Constitution developed their conceptions of religion and government based on a variety of sources: classical political theory, such as Aristotle; European political theory, such as Machiavelli; English political theory, such as Locke and Hobbes; but also … Continue reading →

My new book, The Sea Mark: Captain John Smith’s Voyage to New England, has been featured in an online interview, found at this link: http://www.philipvickersfithian.com/search/label/Author%27s%20Corner%20series Purchase your signed copy of The Sea Mark at: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=K58N3TBR85S7E

I am teaching this semester a course on the History of Science, and am using two of my books: Science in the Ancient World, and Frontier Naturalist: Jean Louis Berlandier and the Exploration of Northern Mexico and Texas. The latter … Continue reading →

Jeremy Belknap, who is featured in three of my books: Ebenezer Hazard, Jeremy Belknap, and the American Revolution, Passaconaway’s Realm, and the American Plutarch, was a pious scientist. He believed that piety is the most important response of the scientist to … Continue reading →

Oftentimes, missionaries in America were people of exceptional learning. Almon Bacone, for example, the founder of Bacone College, as a faculty member in the 1880s and 1890s taught an incredible number of subjects: Greek, Latin, rhetoric, English literature, logic, natural … Continue reading →

Missionaries and Love: There were many missionaries of many denominations who brought the Gospel to American Indians in the United States and Canada. Besides Anglicans, there were Catholics, Methodists, Lutherans, Moravians, Presybterians, and Baptists. They shared a similar interpretation of … Continue reading →

Thinking… I have done a lot of thinking on, and have become a scholar of, American Indian history. I backed into this field of intellectual endeavor by taking a job at Bacone College, where I began to have many Indian … Continue reading →

“I think, therefore I am.” This famous sentence comes from Rene Descartes the seventeenth-French philosopher. Descartes, a skeptic doubting all, looking for the basic rudiments of reality, discovered a core of reality in the awareness of his own being. By … Continue reading →

Alexander Posey, the Creek poet, was a student and librarian at Indian University, now Bacone College, in the 1890s. During his brief life (1873-1908), Posey published essays, satire, stories, and wonderful poems about nature, life, and death. He wrote whimsically … Continue reading →

Carved on the northeast corner of the Bacone College chapel is this passage from the Old Testament: Micah, 6:8: He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good: and what doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly … Continue reading →