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Category Archives: Historical episodes
Complexities of medieval islamicate thought
Interesting and illuminating essay here debunking Neil deGrasse Tyson’s ignorant, repeated, and insistent claim that Al-Ghazali killed medieval science. Physicists very much like to invent history according to their preconceived notions. Key paragraph: I could keep listing astronomers, physicists, and … Continue reading
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Kant, Hegel, and how to be enlightened citizens
[Reflections on reading Robert B. Brandom, “Some Pragmatist Themes in Hegel’s Idealism”, in his book Tales of the Mighty Dead (Harvard UP, 2002).] Both Kant and Hegel were writing in a time of thorough-going Enlightenment. For the most part they … Continue reading
3QD: Our very own annus mirabilis
This isn’t the first time universities have shut down from fear of pestilence. In 1665, “it pleased the Almighty God in his just severity to visit this towne of Cambridge with the plague of pestilence”, and Cambridge University was closed. … Continue reading
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The impact of Boris Hessen
Reading: Gerardo Ienna and Giulia Rispoli, “Boris Hessen at the Crossroads of Science and Ideology from International Circulation to the Soviet Context”, Society and Politics, 2019, 13:37-63. [These are just some preliminary notes on a very complex story I am … Continue reading
Hobbes and coins
Thomas Hobbes saw humans as purely mechanical devices. External objects press against us in one way or another, setting off a chain reaction of interior pulleys, wheels, and ratchets that engage one another and result in some version of “Cuckoo!” … Continue reading
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On the Other Delphic Maxims
Now up at Aeon. The conclusion: The fact that the great majority of maxims on the list can still serve us today is itself worth further reflection. There is no denying that our lives have changed a lot in the … Continue reading
Say, whatever happened to Casearius?
Readers of Spinoza’s letters will recall the name “Casearius”. Johannes Casearius lived in the same house in Rijnsburg as Spinoza, and Spinoza taught him Cartesian philosophy, an effort which led in part to Spinoza’s book, The Principles of Cartesian Philosophy. … Continue reading
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A New Liberal Arts
The traditional liberal arts (logic, rhetoric, dialectic, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music) arose for two reasons: to preserve knowledge and to render young men fit for positions of influence. Knowledge had pretty much been wiped out in western Europe with … Continue reading
Artefactual language as the enabler of Spirit
Cultural information rains down on the landscape of our genetically endowed mental capacities, mouldering the paths along which future information must travel, eroding and shaping the patterns of our thoughts and reactions (Distin 2011, 177-8) Chasing down some of Sloterdijk’s … Continue reading
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Enlightenment now
(Reading Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now) I am totally down with this book. Its main thesis is that the core values of the Enlightenment – Reason, Science, and Humanism – have resulted in human life being better in every measurable way. … Continue reading
Philosophy as an art of concepts
Around the beginning of the 20th century, the intellectual landscape changed radically and forever. The old view, let’s say, presumed the intelligibility of a God’s eye perspective: a vision of Things as They Are, or Things as They Really Are … Continue reading
Work in progress
I’m slowly working on a book that tries to integrate what I’m learning about history with what I know (or think I know!) about early modern philosophy, and thought I’d post an excerpt that covers, in a general way, putting … Continue reading
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Philosophy as enchantment?
[What follows is a version of an address recently given at the Mountain-Plains Philosophy Conference, where a good time was had by all.] In a lecture at the University of Munich in 1919 – the year before he died – … Continue reading
Philosophy and its history
Philosophy and its History: aims and methods in the study of early modern philosophy, edited by Mogens Laerke, Justin E. H. Smith, and Eric Schliesser (Oxford UP, 2013). For the longest time, philosophers were interested in their own history only … Continue reading
Huenemanniac 