Peter Machamer

I will not speak long -- whatever I say today will be too much, and certainty too little.

I speak for the Department of History and Philosophy of Science and for myself.

Wilfrid was instrumental in bringing me to Pitt -- for good or ill. From the time I visited in 1975 until a few years ago we had a longstanding and continued discussion -- but to that I shall return.

To the Department of History and Philosophy of Science Wilfrid was a patron saint -- not singlehandedly but singlemindedly he aided in creating the program in 1969 and then in bringing the department into being in 1971. It was dear to his heart and his sense of history.

And Wilfrid had a keen sense of history -- many of you know about his interests in Leibniz, Kant, Descartes, and his Greek interests, but he was particularly spectacular on the medievals. Their, forgive the historical anachronism, baroque ontological twists fascinated him. Wilfrid's breadth of knowledge and scholarly erudition was amazing; for a systematic philosopher he had a sharp appreciation of text and the past.

There was the term when with 25 graduate students and 5 visiting faculty members, Wilfrid, Ted McGuire and I went line by line through much of Descartes' corpus in a seminar. It was a very expensive seminar, not only for the University but also for us, especially as we would meet the day before the seminar and then again after -- to explore the issues -- this generally meant martinis and dinner too.

Wilfrid to me as chairman was sage of counsel -- many times I consulted him about appointments and policy -- he was a confidant -- and full of good advice. But he was never better at advice than when predicting Pirates or Steelers successes. Over the years I lost considerable money to him -- I guess the counsel that will always ring in my ears is: "Never let the best be the enemy of the good." Not that he was against the best -- but the best, like truth, was a regulative notion.

To me, though, Wilfrid was an archetypical talker (with Martini in hand, -- Beefeater, up, with a twist -- no olive, the oil spoils the taste -- ). We would dispense with the football bets in the first five minutes. Then would come the call to action: "Lay me down a proposition" Wilfrid would say. For the next few hours, sometimes few growing until 8, we would argue and talk. Sometimes I would sit in the role of Socratic pupil, but not usually. For Wilfrid needed an articulate respondent to bring out his best -- he was, in his own words, a master of the dialectic.

Once about 20 years ago in West Virginia, we dialectically constructed a person from a raw feel -- each dialectical move adding something to the concept and having to be rigorously justified. This exercise lasted all night, and Bob Butts, upon whom the dialectic was personified, went to bed despondent, before we were actually able to reconstitute his personhood.

For me it was not Wilfrid's system, nor the details or his technique that made him the great philosopher and source of wisdom. It was the talk -- the dialectic -- he had a way of talking philosophy, a way of living philosophy and making philosophy live --

He was a philosopher's philosopher -- and I am proud to think of him as a mentor of, sorts, but more proud to have called him friend.