Time

8 - You Can't Get There From Here: Zeno and Melissus

Posted on 16 January 2011

The paradoxes of Zeno and the arguments of Melissus develop the ideas of Parmenides and defend his Eleatic monism.

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30 - A Likely Story: Plato's Timaeus

Posted on 23 April 2011

Peter looks at Plato's Timaeus, focusing on the divine craftsman or demiurge, the receptacle, and the geometrical atomism of Plato's elemental theory.

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40 - Let's Get Physical: Aristotle's Natural Philosophy

Posted on 3 July 2011

Before Isaac Newton (and Olivia Newton John), there was Aristotle. Peter looks at his Physics, focusing on the notions of actuality and potentiality and how they help to explain such concepts as time and motion.

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41 - Richard Sorabji on Time and Eternity in Aristotle

Posted on 10 July 2011

Peter talks to Sir Richard Sorabji about Aristotle's physics, focusing on the definition of time and the eternity of the universe.

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126 - High Five: al-Rāzī

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.

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165 - Neither the Time Nor the Place: Hasdai Crescas

Posted on 2 March 2014

Ḥasdai Crescas shows Aristotelian physics who’s boss, by defending alternative conceptions of time, place and infinity.

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173 - For the Sake of Argument: Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī

Posted on 27 April 2014

The hugely influential Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī weaves Avicenna and Islamic theology into complex dialectical treatments of time, God, the soul, and ethics.

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185 - Follow the Leader: Philosophy under the Safavids

Posted on 20 July 2014

Philosophy in Safavid Iran, and a look back at earlier philosophy among Shiites.

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226. Full of Potential: Thirteenth Century Physics

Posted on 31 May 2015

Richard Rufus and anonymous commentators on Aristotle explore the nature of motion, time, infinity and space.

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38. A Day in the Life: Theories of Time

Posted on 19 March 2017

Ancient Indian cosmology and the Vaiśeṣika defense of the reality of time and space.

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276. Back to the Future: Foreknowledge and Predestination

Posted on 23 April 2017

Scotus, Ockham, and Bradwardine ask how we can be free if God knows and chooses the things we will do in the future.

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279. Quadrivial Pursuits: the Oxford Calculators

Posted on 4 June 2017

Bradwardine and other thinkers based at Oxford make breakthroughs in physics by applying mathematics to motion.

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51. Change of Mind: Vasubandhu and Yogācāra Buddhism

Posted on 15 October 2017

Vasubandhu’s path to Yogācāra Buddhism, a form of idealism which holds that nothing can be mind-independent.

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17. Event Horizon: African Philosophy of Time

Posted on 9 December 2018

John Mbiti’s influential and controversial claim that traditional Africans experience time as having “a long past, a present, and virtually no future.”

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337. More Rare Than the Phoenix: Italian Women Humanists

Posted on 1 December 2019

Cassandra Fedele, Isotta Nogarola, and Laura Cereta seek fame and glory through eloquence and learning.

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411. Pen Pals: Later French Humanism

Posted on 1 January 2023

Joseph Scaliger, Isaac Casaubon, and Guillaume du Vair grapple with history and the events of their own day.

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