Sciences (e.g. astronomy, optics, zoology)
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Early Greek medicine up until Hippocrates, and its relation to Pre-Socratic philosophers like Empedocles.
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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.
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Ptolemy uses philosophy in the service of studying the stars, while philosophers of all persuasions evaluate the widespread practice of astrology.
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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.
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Ibn al-Haytham draws on the tradition of geometrical optics to explain the mystery of human eyesight.
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Leading scholar of medieval Jewish thought Gad Freudenthal joins Peter in a concluding episode on Andalusian thought.
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Philosophy and science survive and even thrive through the coming of the Mongols.
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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.
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Translator, scientist and theologian Robert Grosseteste sheds light on the cosmos, human understanding, and the rainbow.
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Roger Bacon extols the power of science based on experience and uses a general theory of "species" to explain light and vision.
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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.
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An interview with Monica Green reveals parallels between medicine and philosophy in the middle ages.
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The impact of ancient Indian thought upon the Muslim scholar al-Bīrūnī and upon European thinkers like Hume, Hegel, and Schopenhauer.
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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.
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Paulin Hountondji (pictured) and other African philosophers criticize ethnophilosophy and advocate a universalist approach.
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Mathematics and the sciences in Byzantium, focusing on scholars of the Palaiologan period like Blemmydes and Metochites.
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Ignatius Sancho and Benjamin Banneker make their mark on the history of Africana thought through letters that reflect on the power of sentiment.
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Africanus Horton looks toward a future of self-government for West Africa beyond slavery and colonialism.
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Haitian anthropologist Anténor Firmin debunks racist pseudo-science and argues that inequalities among humans are caused by social, not biological, factors.
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The blurry line dividing humanism and scholastic university culture in the Italian Renaissance.
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Aristotle’s works are edited, printed, and translated, leading to new assessments of his thought among both humanists and scholastics.
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An interview with Dag Nikolaus Hasse on the Renaissance reception of Averroes, Avicenna, and other authors who wrote in Arabic.
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Connections between philosophy and advances in medicine, including the anatomy of Vesalius.
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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."
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Brian Copenhaver joins us to explain how Ficino and other Renaissance philosophers thought about magic.
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Giordano Bruno’s stunning vision of an infinite universe with infinite worlds, and his own untimely end.
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Did Galileo’s scientific discoveries grow out of the culture of the Italian Renaissance?
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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.
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Luther’s close ally Melanchthon uses his knowledge of ancient philosophy and rhetoric in the service of the Reformation.
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Guest Liam Kofi Bright discusses Du Bois' ideal of value-free science and the place of science within his wider thought.
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Paracelsus adapts the tradition of alchemical science for use in medicine, and in the process overturns the scientific theories of Aristotle and Galen.
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Schegk, Taurellus, Gorlaeus, and Sennert revive atomism to explain chemical reactions, the composition of bodies, and the generation of organisms.
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How revolutionary was the Copernican Revolution?
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Responses to Copernicus in the 16th century, culminating with the master of astral observation Tycho Brahe.
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Kepler combines Brahe's observations, Copernicus' astronomy, and Platonist metaphysics.
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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".
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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.)
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A discussion of the history and philosophical significance of scholasticism from medieval times to early modernity, and even today.
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Science, intrigue, exploration, angelic seances! It's the life and thought of Elizabethan mathematician and magician John Dee.
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How scientists of the Elizabethan age anticipated the discoveries and methods of the Enlightenment (without necessarily publishing them).
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Changing ideas about eyesight, light, mirror images, and refraction – and the skeptical worries they may have inspired.
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The cosmological and methodological implications of breakthroughs in the understanding of magnetism and electricity at the turn of the 17th century.
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An expert on Renaissance alchemy tells us how this art related to philosophy at the time... and how she has tried to reproduce its results!
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Iberian expeditions to the Americas inspire scientists, and Matteo Ricci’s religious mission to Asia becomes an encounter between European and Chinese philosophy.
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Ignatius of Loyola’s movement begins modestly, but winds up having a global impact on education and philosophy. We also discuss casuistry and the Jesuit concept of "mental reservation."
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The philosophical issues at the heart of the notorious condemnation of Galileo and Copernican astronomy.
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We finish our look at philosophy in the Reformation era with an interview about Galileo's use of a revolutionary technology: the telescope.
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How scholars around Europe created an international network of intellectual exchange. As examples we consider the activities of Mersenne, Peiresc, Leibniz, Calvet, and Hartlib.
For my interview with Michael Carhart about Leibniz's correspondence go to the first of the bonus series of ten episodes on German philosophy and the world under Bonus Episodes!
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In this interview we learn more about the Republic of Letters: its importance for the history of ideas, it geographic breadth, who was involved, and the contributions of figures including Leibniz and Hartlib.
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How René Descartes’ understanding of his own intellectual project evolved across his lifetime.
