Matter
Posted on 16 January 2011
Peter discusses the Presocratic philosopher Empedocles and his principles: Love, Strife, and the four “roots,” or elements.
14 comments
Posted on 26 June 2011
Aristotle's Physics presents four types of cause: formal, material, final and efficient. Peter looks at all four, and asks whether evolutionary theory undermines final causes in nature.
52 comments
Posted on 20 November 2011
Peter begins to examine the philosophy of Epicurus, focusing on his empiricist theory of knowledge and his atomic physics.
16 comments
Posted on 11 December 2011
Lucretius’ poem On the Nature of Things sets Epicureanism into verse. Peter takes a look at its treatment of the soul, free will and the swerve and human society.
6 comments
Posted on 8 January 2012
Peter looks at the Stoic idea of god, a providential fire that pervades nature, and considers their idea of a deterministic and eternally recurring cosmos.
22 comments
Posted on 22 July 2012
Plotinus struggles to explain the presence of suffering, evil and ugliness in a world caused by purely good principles – and tells us what role we should play in that world.
27 comments
Posted on 24 March 2013
A first look at the philosophical contributions of Islamic theology (kalām) and its political context, focusing on the Mu'tazilites Abū l-Hudhayl and al-Naẓẓām.
36 comments
Posted on 28 April 2013
The doctor and philosopher Abū Bakr al-Rāzī sets out a daring philosophical theory involving five eternal principles: God, soul, matter, time and place.
14 comments
Posted on 22 December 2013
Neoplatonism returns in Ibn Gabirol (known in Latin as Avicebron), who controversially holds that everything apart from God has both matter and form.
17 comments
Posted on 23 October 2016
Scotus explains how things can share a nature in common while being unique individuals.
12 comments
Posted on 5 March 2017
The Vaiśeṣika response to Buddhist skepticism about wholes made up of parts.
3 comments
Posted on 16 April 2017
Pāyasi and the Cārvāka anticipate modern-day theories of mind by arguing that there is no independent soul; rather thought emerges from the body.
10 comments
Posted on 18 June 2017
Ockham, Buridan, Oresme and Francis of Marchia explore cosmology, atomism, and the impetus involved in motion.
10 comments
Posted on 8 April 2018
Bob Pasnau joins Peter to discuss ideas about substance from Aquinas down to the time of Locke, Leibniz and Descartes.
15 comments
Posted on 7 October 2018
The trial of John Italos and other signs of Byzantine disquiet with the pagan philosophical tradition.
4 comments
Posted on 7 April 2019
Mathematics and the sciences in Byzantium, focusing on scholars of the Palaiologan period like Blemmydes and Metochites.
9 comments
Posted on 2 January 2022
An interview with Helen Hattab on the scope and impact of scholastic philosophy among Protestants.
3 comments
Posted on 16 January 2022
Paracelsus adapts the tradition of alchemical science for use in medicine, and in the process overturns the scientific theories of Aristotle and Galen.
5 comments
Posted on 30 January 2022
Schegk, Taurellus, Gorlaeus, and Sennert revive atomism to explain chemical reactions, the composition of bodies, and the generation of organisms.
2 comments
Posted on 31 July 2022
Challenges to Galenic medical orthodoxy from natural philosophy: Jean Fernel with his idea of the human’s “total substance,” and the Paracelsans.
5 comments
Posted on 16 January 2011
In this episode Peter discusses the Atomists Democritus and Leucippus, and how they were responding to the ideas of Parmenides and his followers.
30 comments