HoP 404 - Robert Goulding on Peter Ramus

September 25th, 2022

A chat with Ramus expert Robert Goulding on the role of mathematics in Ramist philosophy.

HoP 403 - Make It Simple - Peter Ramus

September 11th, 2022

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

July 31st, 2022

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

May 8th, 2022

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

April 24th, 2022

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

HoP 394 - Best of Both Worlds - Tycho Brahe

April 10th, 2022

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

March 27th, 2022

How revolutionary was the Copernican Revolution?

HoP 389 - The Acid Test - Theories of Matter

January 30th, 2022

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

HoP 388 - Just Add Salt - Paracelsus and Alchemy

January 16th, 2022

Paracelsus adapts the tradition of alchemical science for use in medicine, and in the process overturns the scientific theories of Aristotle and Galen.

HoP 386 - Perhaps Not Wrong - Cornelius Agrippa

December 19th, 2021

Was Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa a dark magician, a pious skeptic, or both?

HoP 381 - More Lutheran than Luther - Philip Melanchthon

October 10th, 2021

Luther’s close ally Melanchthon uses his knowledge of ancient philosophy and rhetoric in the service of the Reformation.

HoP 377 - One Way or Another - Northern Scholasticism

July 18th, 2021

Trends in Aristotelian philosophy in northern and eastern Europe in the fifteenth century, featuring discussion of the “Wegestreit” and the nominalist theology of Gabriel Biel.

HoP 371 - European Disunion - Introduction to the Reformation

April 25th, 2021

How humanism and scholasticism came together with the Protestant Reformation to create the philosophy of 15-16th century Europe.

HoP 369 - The Harder They Fall - Galileo and the Renaissance

March 28th, 2021

Did Galileo’s scientific discoveries grow out of the culture of the Italian Renaissance?

HoP 368 - Boundless Enthusiasm - Giordano Bruno

March 14th, 2021

Giordano Bruno’s stunning vision of an infinite universe with infinite worlds, and his own untimely end.

HoP 367 - Brian Copenhaver on Renaissance Magic

February 28th, 2021

Our guest Brian Copenhaver joins us to explain how Ficino and other Renaissance philosophers thought about magic.

HoP 366 - The Men Who Saw Tomorrow - Renaissance Magic and Astrology

February 14th, 2021

Ficino, Pico, Cardano, and other Renaissance thinkers debate whether astrology and magic are legitimate sciences with a foundation in natural philosophy.