Patrick A. Heelan, S.J., on William J. Richardson, S.J.

Fr. Patrick Heelan answers questions concerning his first meeting with Bill Richardson, including an eyewitness account of Bill’s famed doctoral defense in Leuven (and Emmanuel Levinas’ response to the same), reflecting upon the significance of this encounter for his own later development of an application of phenomenology and (due to Bill), ultimately hermeneutic philosophy of science, drawing on Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, particularly for the sake of a philosophy of quantum mechanics, laboratory science, and perception (including) art. Exceptional in Fr. Heelan’s discussion is his assessment of Bill’s ’embodied’ approach to philosophy as a performative, applied practice, or art.