Posted on 24 July 2011
Aristotle’s scientific outlook is perhaps best displayed in his zoology. Peter looks at his theories of inheritance, spontaneous generation, and the eternity of animal species.
20 commentsPosted on 17 June 2012
Ptolemy uses philosophy in the service of studying the stars, while philosophers of all persuasions evaluate the widespread practice of astrology.
Posted on 25 August 2012
James Wilberding joins Peter to show that contrary to what is often claimed, Neoplatonists did make contributions to the philosophy of nature. Topics include Plotinus on the cosmos and Porphyry on embryology.
1 commentsPosted on 8 June 2013
Ibn al-Haytham draws on the tradition of geometrical optics to explain the mystery of human eyesight.
13 commentsPosted on 6 April 2014
Leading scholar of medieval Jewish thought Gad Freudenthal joins Peter in a concluding episode on Andalusian thought.
1 commentsPosted on 28 June 2014
Philosophy and science survive and even thrive through the coming of the Mongols.
5 commentsPosted on 28 September 2014
18th and 19th century intellectuals in India and the Ottoman empire, from Shāh Walī Allāhto the Young Turks, continue Islamic traditions and grapple with European science.
3 commentsPosted on 28 June 2015
Translator, scientist and theologian Robert Grosseteste sheds light on the cosmos, human understanding, and the rainbow.
0 commentsPosted on 5 July 2015
Roger Bacon extols the power of science based on experience and uses a general theory of "species" to explain light and vision.
4 commentsPosted on 8 November 2015
Albert the Great earns his nickname “universal doctor” by devoting himself to the whole of nature, from geology and botany to the study of human nature.
2 commentsPosted on 2 July 2017
An interview with Monica Green reveals parallels between medicine and philosophy in the middle ages.
4 commentsPosted on 18 February 2018
The impact of ancient Indian thought upon the Muslim scholar al-Bīrūnī and upon European thinkers like Hume, Hegel, and Schopenhauer.
4 commentsPosted on 2 December 2018
Princess Anna Komnene makes good use of her political retirement by writing her Alexiad and gathering a circle of scholars to write commentaries on Aristotle.
0 commentsPosted on 17 March 2019
Paulin Hountondji (pictured) and other African philosophers criticize ethnophilosophy and advocate a universalist approach.
0 commentsPosted on 7 April 2019
Mathematics and the sciences in Byzantium, focusing on scholars of the Palaiologan period like Blemmydes and Metochites.
9 commentsPosted on 15 September 2019
Ignatius Sancho and Benjamin Banneker make their mark on the history of Africana thought through letters that reflect on the power of sentiment.
5 commentsPosted on 21 June 2020
Africanus Horton looks toward a future of self-government for West Africa beyond slavery and colonialism.
0 commentsPosted on 6 September 2020
Haitian anthropologist Anténor Firmin debunks racist pseudo-science and argues that inequalities among humans are caused by social, not biological, factors.
0 commentsPosted on 13 September 2020
The blurry line dividing humanism and scholastic university culture in the Italian Renaissance.
2 commentsPosted on 27 September 2020
Aristotle’s works are edited, printed, and translated, leading to new assessments of his thought among both humanists and scholastics.
8 commentsPosted on 22 November 2020
An interview with Dag Nikolaus Hasse on the Renaissance reception of Averroes, Avicenna, and other authors who wrote in Arabic.
0 commentsPosted on 20 December 2020
Connections between philosophy and advances in medicine, including the anatomy of Vesalius.
0 commentsPosted on 27 December 2020
W.E.B. Du Bois emerges as a historian, sociologist, and innovative philosophical thinker in the 1890s, and introduces his famous idea of "double consciousness."
4 commentsPosted on 28 February 2021
Brian Copenhaver joins us to explain how Ficino and other Renaissance philosophers thought about magic.
7 commentsPosted on 14 March 2021
Giordano Bruno’s stunning vision of an infinite universe with infinite worlds, and his own untimely end.
6 commentsPosted on 28 March 2021
Did Galileo’s scientific discoveries grow out of the culture of the Italian Renaissance?
8 commentsPosted on 11 July 2021
From the latter half of the nineteenth century to the 1970s, African Americans only rarely obtain jobs as philosophy professors but bring distinctive perspectives to the profession.
0 commentsPosted on 10 October 2021
Luther’s close ally Melanchthon uses his knowledge of ancient philosophy and rhetoric in the service of the Reformation.
4 commentsPosted on 17 October 2021
Guest Liam Kofi Bright discusses Du Bois' ideal of value-free science and the place of science within his wider thought.
0 commentsPosted 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 commentsPosted 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 commentsPosted on 27 March 2022
How revolutionary was the Copernican Revolution?
14 commentsPosted on 10 April 2022
Responses to Copernicus in the 16th century, culminating with the master of astral observation Tycho Brahe.
0 commentsPosted on 24 April 2022
Kepler combines Brahe's observations, Copernicus' astronomy, and Platonist metaphysics.
4 commentsPosted on 8 May 2022
Comets! Magnets! Armadillos! In this wide-ranging interview Lorraine Daston tells us how Renaissance and early modern scientists dealt with the extraordinary events they called "wonders".
6 commentsPosted on 18 December 2022
A chat with Ann Blair about the "Theater of Nature" by Jean Bodin, and other encyclopedic works of natural philosophy. (Pictured: Prof Blair holding the annotated copy of Bodin's Theatrum she describes in the episode.)
0 comments
Posted on 16 January 2011
Early Greek medicine up until Hippocrates, and its relation to Pre-Socratic philosophers like Empedocles.
4 comments