my medieval philosophy class has been weird. UCLA divides its history of philosophy course into three classes, 100A, 100B, and 100C. 100A covers the Greek thinkers, from Thales to Aristotle. 100C covers the period from roughly 1650 to 1800, which would include the likes of Hobbes, Berkeley, Locke, Spinoza, Hume, and Kant, among others. 100B covers everything in between, which is only, oh, i dunno, about two thousand years. and this particular class includes Rene Descartes as a medieval philosopher--which is weird, because most people don't generally think of him as one. my professor made a case for why he could be included with them, but Descartes' thought seems to me more like it belongs in 100C than 100B. but the instructor for 100C didn't want to cover Descartes, so, well, there you go.

at any rate, 100B has to cover thinkers from Theophrastus all the way to the Renaissance, from everywhere from Ireland to Iran. and contrary to popular belief, the Middle Ages weren't intellectually dormant; there are lots of thinkers, like Richard Rufus of Cornwall, whose work has been lost for a long time and are just starting to be rediscovered. because there's two thousand years' worth of thought to cover, this class just covers selected medieval philosophers' thoughts on the subject of the human soul--a subject that has much to do with what we would today call psychology.

but one of the important questions relating to it is what it is that makes us human, and what makes us alive. that right there has important implications today, such as for artificial intelligence or cloning or stem cell research and so on. and it also has questions about how we are able to think--a question that's still a hot topic in philosophy and has kind of obvious implications for everything else.

personally, i'm inclined more towards ethics, moral psychology, and political/social philosophy than hardcore metaphysics or logic. i got into philosophy through Plato's early dialogues, where Socrates is certainly concerned with questions of definition and epistemology, but only as a means to the end of living the right way. so i'm only really passionate about this particular subject to the extent that it intersects with what i mentioned above. but i find it fascinating all the same, if for no other reason than it represents humans trying to understand themselves and the world around them through reason. even the most theological of medieval philosophers were unwilling to completely abandon reason.

i would imagine the easiest way to prove Earth's rotation to someone is a simple empirical demonstration. i guess the best one would be, like, a timelapsed video from a satellite showing the Earth rotating or whatever. or there's the Coriolis effect, which you'd have to explain some other way if the Earth wasn't rotating. but if someone doesn't believe that the Earth doesn't rotate and there's no other factors involved (like being someone without a basic education), well, they probably don't want to believe that the Earth rotates, for whatever reason. and if that's the case, then you can't convince them anyways, because people can only be convinced by superior argument and evidence if they're willing to accept them.