Historical episodes
-
Krug’s pen
Wilhelm Traugott Krug (1770-1842) was the philosopher who succeeded Kant in the chair for logic and metaphysics at the University of Königsberg. Just before taking on that role, he had thrown down a challenge for Schelling’s idealist philosophy: could Schelling, or any idealist, pretend to offer any sort of explanation why, from the Absolute, any Continue reading
-
John Dee’s books, magic, and ruling the world
There’s a great little essay here by Brooke Palmieri on the JHI blog, which I’m reposting here mainly so that I don’t forget to go back and study in more detail. Excerpt: No wonder Dee could argue so forcefully in General and rare memorials pertayning to the perfect arte of navigation (1577), and his other Continue reading
-
On knowledge regimes
Yesterday I came across the phrase “early modern knowledge regime,” and it teased my curiosity. What could this term mean? [I already have a short list of books to start reading, but I’ll begin first with what’s in reach and on top of my neck.] It probably comes from Foucault: “Truth is a thing of Continue reading
-
Brainwashing, the Red Scare, and the Turing Test
I just came across this brilliant lecture, “Imitation Games: Conspiratorial Sciences and Intelligent Machines,” given recently by Simon Schaffer. I’ve noted Schaffer’s work before on early automata. Here he extends his interest in our fascination with automata to post-WWII paranoia. Schaffer illustrates the intelligence backdrop to Turing’s work, and particularly the paranoia among communists and Continue reading
-
Hypatia of Alexandria: or, a primer on platonic love
Plato, as we know, told tales of an abstract realm beyond the senses, a realm beyond the dim and dark cave we call “the world.” It was a realm of forms, first glimpsed through the discipline of mathematics, and more thoroughly known through philosophical cross-examination, or dialectic. It’s not clear just how much religion there Continue reading
-
Witches and inoculations
Joseph Glanvill (1636-1680) may have been the first popularizer of modern science. Educated at Oxford, and one of the earliest fellows of the Royal Society, Glanvill published works that railed against rigid dogmatism and promoted open-minded scientific inquiry. He believed that the patient application of reason and experience, expressed in clear and unambiguous prose, would Continue reading
-
“A Stranger to One’s Own Country”
Descartes was not a bookish man. There’s a well-known anecdote that reveals what he thought of libraries: One of his friends went to visit Descartes at Egmond. This gentleman asked him about physics books: which ones did he most value, and which of them he did most frequently consult. ‘I shall show you’, he replied, Continue reading
-
On Kuhn and the scientific revolution
I had the welcome opportunity recently to read an essay by Dan Garber on why the scientific revolution wasn’t a scientific revolution. It’s bound for a collection of essays on the legacy of Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolution, and reading it gave me a chance to reflect a little on Kuhn. It seems to Continue reading
-
My take on Newton
As a scholar of the early modern period, I cannot not have something to say about the great Isaac Newton. But I confess that I am intimidated both by his work and the thick forests of works that have been written about him, and I know I’m not up to the task of being a Continue reading
-
The Magical Dimensions of the Globe
There’s a particularly good episode of Doctor Who (“The Shakespeare Code”) wherein the Doctor and Martha visit Shakespeare and save the world from a conspiracy of witches. The witches’ plan is to take possession of Shakespeare and force him to write magical incantations into the (now lost) play Love’s Labours Won. (It’s not really magic, of Continue reading
-
Learning from Hume; or, Hume and Particle Physics
Philosophy students are typically taught the wrong lesson from the great Scottish skeptic David Hume. The standard story goes something like this. British empiricists like Locke and Berkeley wanted to connect everything we know to what we experience through the senses. The welcome consequence of this strategy is that all the stuff we see and Continue reading
-
Multitasking and multipurposing
The other day was entirely typical, but I paused to consider the wonder of it all. I was trading moves back and forth with a friend playing Civilization. I was the American civilization under Roosevelt, and because of some luck with natural resources, advantages in constructing Wonders, and some devilishly clever economic planning, I was Continue reading
-
Early modern revolution
In the 16th and 17th centuries, Protestants invaded Catholic territories both geographic and ideological. Armed with sharp invectives and printing presses, anti-Catholic firebrands overturned centuries-old accounts of God and the natural world, flooding markets with new bibles, new confessional literatures, and new treatises of astronomy, astrology, medicine, alchemy, and magic. The Catholics reacted with ultimately Continue reading
-
Central Asia’s Golden Age
[S. Frederick Starr, Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia’s Golden Age, Princeton, 2013] I can’t even say what my hazy mental picture of medieval central Asia was before I read S. Frederick Starr’s Lost Enlightenment. That’s how poorly represented it was in my mental geography – there was not even a little sign on a stick saying, Continue reading
-
David Hume – the “Assassin’s Assessor”
Edinburgh’s “Poker Club” began meeting in 1762. Each week, fifty or so gentlemen would congregate in a tavern for a long afternoon followed by dinner and argue events of the day ranging from politics to morals and culture – matters like national characters, standards of taste, what makes for a good theatrical tragedy, whether all Continue reading
-
Automata of our own making
[Currently reading Minsoo Kang, Sublime Dreams of Living Machines: the Automaton in the European Imagination (Harvard UP, 2011).] Human beings groove on creating things in which they can see themselves. Mirrors, of course – but also cave paintings, sculptures, plays, poems, music, and robots. Each creation brings on an out-of-body experience, as we can see Continue reading
-
London, 1641
“Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased” – Daniel 12:4 London was an exciting place to be in 1641. The political uncertainty was both thrilling and terrifying: many Puritans, convinced that their suspected crypto-catholic king, Charles I, was in league with the Anti-Christ, were pushing back against his high-handed policies. Their Continue reading
-
The early modern craze for titles
As the Republic of Letters expanded in the late 17th/early 18th centuries, gentlemen began to assume titles which were, let’s say, a bit generous. Johann Burkhardt Menke’s Charlatanerie des savans (1715) brings such persons up short – Since the beginning of the Restoration of the Sciences, has not this fury for Titles, & if I dare to Continue reading
-
Idle musings on historical periods
My academic specialty is known among philosophers as “early modern” philosophy, and by that is typically meant a string of canonical figures extending from Descartes to Kant. Before Descartes, philosophy is all medieval (the story goes); after Kant, it is an assortment of heady idealism, existentialism, utilitarianism, and nascent naturalism. (Philosophers mostly disregard the Renaissance Continue reading
-
Comenius’s primer for learning Latin
I recently came across a 1685 English translation of Comenius’s “World of Pictures,” which was a primer aimed at helping children to learn Latin. (Comenius’s original was for German children, but this book was translated by Charles Hoole.) The idea was to give this book to kids and just let them enjoy the pictures and Continue reading
-
Invented languages on Utah Public Radio
I recently had the joy of discussing perfect and invented language on Utah Public Radio with USU Folklorist Lynne McNeill, who, as it turns out, speaks some Klingon. If you are interested Continue reading
-
For the love of words
James Turner, Philology (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2014). These days we think of “the Humanities” as a natural kind. There are the natural sciences, the social sciences, the creative arts, and the humanities (and then the grab bag of more vocationally-focused areas of expertise, like business, engineering, agriculture, etc). Indeed, university campuses make these seemingly natural Continue reading
Huenemanniac 