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.
15 commentsPosted 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.
24 commentsPosted 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.
35 commentsPosted 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 commentsPosted on 2 March 2014
Ḥasdai Crescas shows Aristotelian physics who’s boss, by defending alternative conceptions of time, place and infinity.
24 commentsPosted 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.
27 commentsPosted on 20 July 2014
Philosophy in Safavid Iran, and a look back at earlier philosophy among Shiites.
4 commentsPosted on 31 May 2015
Richard Rufus and anonymous commentators on Aristotle explore the nature of motion, time, infinity and space.
8 commentsPosted on 19 March 2017
Ancient Indian cosmology and the Vaiśeṣika defense of the reality of time and space.
0 commentsPosted 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.
15 commentsPosted on 4 June 2017
Bradwardine and other thinkers based at Oxford make breakthroughs in physics by applying mathematics to motion.
2 commentsPosted on 15 October 2017
Vasubandhu’s path to Yogācāra Buddhism, a form of idealism which holds that nothing can be mind-independent.
1 commentsPosted 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.”
3 commentsPosted on 1 December 2019
Cassandra Fedele, Isotta Nogarola, and Laura Cereta seek fame and glory through eloquence and learning.
0 commentsPosted on 1 January 2023
Joseph Scaliger, Isaac Casaubon, and Guillaume du Vair grapple with history and the events of their own day.
1 comments
Posted on 16 January 2011
The paradoxes of Zeno and the arguments of Melissus develop the ideas of Parmenides and defend his Eleatic monism.
53 comments