Curated playlist
Empiricists
- John LockeJohn Locke's phrase "long train of abuses" appears word for word in the Declaration of Independence.
- John Stuart MillJohn Stuart Mill was reading Greek at age three. His father was deliberately raising a genius.
- Gilles DeleuzeGilles Deleuze never trimmed his fingernails. He once explained that he lacked "normal protective fingerprints", and so could not "touch an object, particularly a piece of cloth, with the pads of my fingers without sharp pain". It is a…
- Rudolf CarnapRudolf Carnap argued that most deep philosophical questions were meaningless.
- Francis BaconFrancis Bacon may have died after stuffing a hen with snow. He wanted to test if cold could preserve meat like salt.
- Thomas HobbesThomas Hobbes, the English philosopher born in 1588 at Westport in Wiltshire, liked to say that his mother gave birth to twins: "myself and fear." He arrived early, because news had just reached the household that the Spanish Armada was…
- Pierre GassendiIn 1631, Pierre Gassendi became the first person on record to watch a planet cross the Sun. It was Mercury.
- John Henry NewmanJohn Henry Newman was an English theologian who became a cardinal and, in 2019, a saint. On the 2nd of October 2008, his grave was opened so that his remains could be moved to a tomb inside the Birmingham Oratory. There, visitors could…
- LucretiusA Roman poem on atoms sat forgotten in a German monastery for over a thousand years.
- Bertrand RussellAt 89, philosopher Bertrand Russell went to jail for an anti-nuclear protest. Asked to behave, he said, "No, I won't."
- Ernst MachEinstein called Ernst Mach a precursor of general relativity, yet Mach apparently rejected the theory.