History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps

HoP 470 Gary Hatfield on Descartes' Meditations

We're joined in this episode by a leading expert on one of the most famous works of philosophy ever written: Descartes' Meditations.

HoP 468 Perchance to Dream: Descartes’ Skeptical Method

How Descartes fashioned a “method” to repel even the strongest and most radical forms of doubt, with the cogito argument as its foundation.

HoP 467 Written in Mathematics: Descartes’ Physics

For Descartes body is purely geometrical. So how does he understand features we can perceive, like color, and causation between bodies?

HoP 466 Well Hidden: Descartes’ Life and Works

How René Descartes’ understanding of his own intellectual project evolved across his lifetime.

HoP 464 Howard Hotson on the Republic of Letters

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.

HoP 463 Doctors without Borders: the Republic of Letters

How scholars around Europe created an international network of intellectual exchange. As examples we consider the activities of Mersenne, Peiresc, Leibniz, Calvet, and Hartlib.

HoP 462 Freedom to Philosophize: Introduction to Early Modern Philosophy

What is Enlightenment, anyway?

HoP 461 - Eileen Reeves on Galileo and the Telescope

We finish our look at philosophy in the Reformation era with an interview about Galileo's use of a revolutionary technology: the telescope.

HoP 460 - Trial and Error - Galileo and the Inquisition

The philosophical issues at the heart of the notorious condemnation of Galileo and Copernican astronomy.

HoP 459 - Cardinal Rule - Robert Bellarmine

Though most famous for his role in persecuting Galileo, Robert Bellarmine was a central figure of the Counter-Reformation, especially in his political thought.

HoP 457 - Take Your Medicine - Oliva Sabuco and Camilla Erculiani

Natural philosophy and medicine in the work of two unorthodox thinkers of the late sixteenth century, both of them women.

HoP 445 - Band of Brothers - the Jesuits

Ignatius of Loyola’s movement begins modestly, but winds up having a global impact on education and philosophy.

HoP 440 - Longitudinal Studies - Exploration and Science

Iberian expeditions to the Americas inspire scientists, and Matteo Ricci’s religious mission to Asia becomes an encounter between European and Chinese philosophy.

HoP 437 - Jennifer Rampling on Renaissance Alchemy

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!

HoP 436 - Unpathed Waters, Undreamed Shores - Robert Fludd

Our last figure of the English Renaissance undertakes daring investigations of chemistry, medicine, agriculture, and cosmology – and gets accused of magic and Rosicrucianism.

HoP 435 - Metal More Attractive - William Gilbert and Magnetism

The cosmological and methodological implications of breakthroughs in the understanding of magnetism and electricity at the turn of the 17th century.

HoP 434 - The Eye Sees Not Itself But By Reflection - Theories of Vision

Changing ideas about eyesight, light, mirror images, and refraction – and the skeptical worries they may have inspired.

HoP 433 - Nature’s Mystery - Science in Renaissance England

How scientists of the Elizabethan age anticipated the discoveries and methods of the Enlightenment (without necessarily publishing them).

HoP 432 - If This Be Magic, Let It Be an Art - John Dee

Science, intrigue, exploration, angelic seances! It's the life and thought of Elizabethan mathematician and magician John Dee.

HoP 431 - Calvin Normore on Scholasticism

A discussion of the history and philosophical significance of scholasticism from medieval times to early modernity, and even today.