John Cole, the Thomas Hedley Reynolds Professor of History, claims one basic conviction. "Everyday life is what matters most. It's different for different persons, and it changes over time." Cole has published monographs on the French philosophers Henri Descartes and Blaise Pascal who "relate everyday realities of family life to formal thought and writing," he says.

Cole's acclaimed book, "Pascal: The Man and His Two Loves" (New York University Press, 1995), examines the scientific genius, subsequent religious conversion and later masterpieces of Pascal. Cole reintegrates the seemingly disparate periods of the Frenchman's life into a clear, complete portrait. In "The Olympian Dream and Youthful Rebellion of Rene Descartes" (The University of Illinois Press, 1992) Cole analyzes a famous series of dreams the mathematican experienced. The result is a systematic interpretation for their effect on his later career.

A member of the Bates faculty since 1967, Cole teaches courses about ancient and modern European civilizations. "I am an intellectual historian, interested in democratic ideas." While on sabbatical during winter and spring 2001, he completed a draft of a manuscript on the 18th-century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and the French Revolution. "My interest is to set her remarkable personal experience in a larger historical context, hoping that tensions between the two will help to explain her achievement."

With a Ph.D. from Harvard and a bachelor of arts degree from Haverford, Cole maintains that a smaller environment allows for closer student-faculty connections. "I learned much more and more happily at little Haverford than at great Harvard, and I have gone on to learn much more and more happily while teaching at Bates," he says. "I am convinced that a highly selective private liberal arts college offers a superior setting for most sorts of learning."