History of ideas

essayMetaphysics
From nothing, everything
The idea of nothing pushes at the limits of thought, spawning paradoxes that have long nourished art, philosophy, and science
Victoria Wohl

videoMathematics
Spiral into the ‘golden ratio’ – and separate the myths from the maths
4 minutes

essayThinkers and theories
The French liar
René Descartes, the founder of modern philosophy, was furiously condemned by his contemporaries. Why did they fear him?
Sandrine Parageau

essayHistory of ideas
From scattered traces
How the ideas circulating among one noblewoman’s coterie in 16th-century Dubrovnik anticipated modern feminist thought
Luka Boršić

essayComparative philosophy
What is Ethiopian philosophy?
Riven by two competing schools of thought, the future of philosophical enquiry in Ethiopia stands at a crossroads
Fasil Merawi

essayOceans and water
An oceanic tempo
An appreciation of the immensity embedded in the ocean’s cycles offers a way to reimagine our relationship with time
James Bradley

essayComparative philosophy
A cure for individualism
It runs deeply through the Western outlook, hailed and condemned in equal measures. For a corrective, look to Confucius
Tim Connolly

essayArt
Out of the fog
It’s a ‘failed painting’ that obscures the profound power of German Romanticism. Why do we love the ‘Wanderer’ so much?
Gianluca Didino

videoHistory
Hags, seductresses, feminist icons – how gender dynamics manifest in witches
13 minutes

essayHistory of science
Legacy of the angels
When medieval scholars sought to understand the nature of angels, they unwittingly laid the foundations of modern physics
Rebekah Wallace

essayHistory of ideas
Ghosts among the philosophers
Cambridge, home of analytic philosophy, was also a hotbed of psychical research. How did this spooky subject take root?
Matyáš Moravec

videoArt
Background music was the radical invention of a trailblazing composer
17 minutes

essayThinkers and theories
The winter of civilisation
Byung-Chul Han’s relentless critiques of digital capitalism reveal how this suffocating system creates hollowed-out lives
Josh Cohen

videoMetaphysics
What do past, present and future mean to a philosopher of time?
55 minutes

essayThinkers and theories
So many unmarried men
For Mary Midgley, the Western philosophical tradition is shaped by the fact that its greatest practitioners were bachelors
Ellie Robson

videoArt
Radical doodles – how ‘exquisite corpse’ games embodied the Surrealist movement
15 minutes

essayHistory of science
The birth of naturalism
The modern era is often seen as the triumph of science over supernaturalism. But what really happened is far more interesting
Peter Harrison

essayKnowledge
The penumbral plunge
Diving into the ring of darkness beyond things easily answerable, asking ‘Why?’ questions is what make humans awesome
Eric Schwitzgebel

videoBeauty and aesthetics
In art, the sublime is a feedback loop, evolving with whatever’s next to threaten us
9 minutes

essayThinkers and theories
Who can claim Aristotle?
The endless battle over his legacy testifies to his great authority – and the power of his thought to make the world better
Edith Hall

essayHistory of ideas
Settling accounts
Before he was famous, Jean-Jacques Rousseau was Louise Dupin’s scribe. It’s her ideas on inequality that fill his writings
Rebecca Wilkin

essayThinkers and theories
The value of our values
When Nietzsche used the tools of philology to explore the nature of morality, he became a ‘philosopher of the future’
Alexander Prescott-Couch

essayHistory of ideas
Philosophy of the people
How two amateur schools pulled a generation of thinkers from the workers and teachers of the 19th-century American Midwest
Joseph M Keegin

essayBiology
Seeing plants anew
The stunningly complex behaviour of plants has led to a new way of thinking about our world: plant philosophy
Stella Sandford