Bio - about J V Bews
Jean Bews is an author and teacher who loves talking philosophy with children and young people. She has a degree in philosophy from Warwick University and thinks that open-mindedness, tolerance and a love of the natural world are all part of being a healthy human being.
One of her favourite philosophical questions is: ‘If there were no such things as human beings, would numbers still exist?’
Another is, ‘Does being big and powerful, like a human being, make you more important in life than, say, an insect?’
‘I’ve always been fascinated by tiny bugs and insects. I like to rescue them if I see them struggling in a pool of water. If a little fly is trapped in a spider’s web, then that’s a dilemma for me – as the spider needs to eat. I often wonder about the lives of these creatures, and how they share the same world as us, but are so different in size. We are so large to tiny red brick mites that they can’t really know we exist at all! And yet here I am with my hand lens, studying them! (I’m always really careful not to disturb their habitat of course.)
Areas of philosophy that have most influenced Jean:
‘Ancient Greek philosophy – because that’s one of the places where mythology was first sidelined, and rational thinking and measuring of the world began. Their thoughts still influence us – even though some of their ideas sound funny today – such as when Heraclitus pronounced that ‘the sun is as big as a foot’ when he held his foot up against the sun to measure it. (See my book blog about ancient philosophy.)’
‘French philosophy – one day I was in my school library and I discovered a small section marked ‘philosophy’. There I found books by two French philosophers called Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, and I was hooked. I love the way they wrote their philosophy into novels. So I’ve done this with ‘Cauldron of Rebirth’ – except that I’ve asked lots of questions instead of giving a fixed philosophical viewpoint, like Sartre and Camus.
However I am not impressed by René Descartes, a French philosopher from the 17th century. He is famous for saying, ‘I think, therefore I am’. Fair enough. However he caused lots of problems when he said the world is a kind of machine (this is called the philosophy of mechanism), and it has affected the way people have thought about animals ever since – as being like machines, without feelings. So some of his thoughts and philosophy changed the world for the worse. That is the power of words for good and bad, and one of the themes in Cauldron of Rebirth.
‘The philosophy of science – that’s a great one, very exciting. How should we treat robots? What if they develop emotions? Should human beings terraform other planets for our own use? What theories do we have about the universe? Could parallel worlds exist? Will science one day be able to answer all our questions? Real important ideas for our time. Brilliant.’
Jean is interested in how we use words, and, as well as her own language English, speaks French, some German and Spanish, and a little bit of Polish and Welsh.
‘Learning languages can be great fun, and makes your brain jump through hoops. You find that they are all put together in pretty much the same sorts of ways. Studying language and how we use it is another area of philosophy. Working out whether our statements make sense and are reasonable and valid is called logic. And logic tells us that an argument can be valid and reasonable, but this doesn’t make it true!
One of the greatest logicians was Lewis Carroll, who wrote ‘Alice in Wonderland’. The story is full of puns and logical tricks, as well as being very funny!’
Jean is a member of SAPERE (the Society for Advancing Philosophical Enquiry and Reflection in Education) and SPP (the Society for Philosophy in Practice). She has written about science and religion, mythological stories, and modern foreign languages. She recently received a French Teacher of the Year Award.