History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps

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 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 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 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 410 - Ann Blair on Jean Bodin’s Natural Philosophy

A chat with Ann Blair about the "Theater of Nature" by Jean Bodin, and other encyclopedic works of natural philosophy.

HoP 403 - Make It Simple - Peter Ramus

Peter Ramus scandalizes his critics, and thrills his students and admirers, by proposing a new and simpler approach to philosophy.

HoP 402 - Life is Not Enough - Medicine in Renaissance France

Challenges to Galenic medical orthodoxy from natural philosophy: Jean Fernel with his idea of the human’s “total substance,” and the Paracelsans.

HoP 396 - Lorraine Daston on Renaissance Science

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".

HoP 395 - Music of the Spheres - Johannes Kepler

Johannes Kepler fuses Platonist philosophy with a modified version of Copernicus’ astronomy.

HoP 394 - Best of Both Worlds - Tycho Brahe

Responses to Copernicus in the 16th century, culminating with the master of astral observation Tycho Brahe.

HoP 393 - The World Doesn’t Revolve Around You - Copernicus

How revolutionary was the Copernican Revolution?

HoP 389 - The Acid Test - Theories of Matter

Schegk, Taurellus, Gorlaeus, and Sennert revive atomism to explain chemical reactions, the composition of bodies, and the generation of organisms.