Curated playlist
Epistemologists
- Augustine of HippoAugustine of Hippo once prayed, "Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet."
- AvicennaIn a fortress prison, Avicenna imagined a man falling through air. It became known as the Floating Man.
- Leo TolstoyLeo Tolstoy spent his last hours on a train, preaching non-violence to strangers.
- Karl MarxKarl Marx left an estate valued at just 250 pounds when he died in 1883. He died stateless in London at 64.
- John LockeJohn Locke's phrase "long train of abuses" appears word for word in the Declaration of Independence.
- Baruch SpinozaBaruch Spinoza was expelled from his Jewish community at twenty-three, and it still refuses him back.
- David HumeDavid Hume said his first book "fell dead-born from the press." He wrote it in France by age twenty-eight.
- Jean PiagetMarking intelligence tests in Paris, Jean Piaget noticed that young children's errors followed patterns.
- 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.
- MenciusMencius said a tyrant king was no longer a ruler at all. The Chinese philosopher put common citizens above rulers.
- Edmund HusserlA Franciscan priest smuggled approximately 40,000 pages of Edmund Husserl's notes out of Nazi Germany.
- AverroesIn 1169, a caliph asked the philosopher Averroes if the heavens had a beginning.
- José Ortega y GassetJosé Ortega y Gasset answered Descartes with "I live therefore I think." He put lived experience before abstract reason.
- Michel WeberMichel Weber opened Belgium's first philosophical counseling service. He champions process philosophy.
- Nick BostromPhilosopher Nick Bostrom warns an AI told to make humans smile might wire electrodes into faces.
- Judea PearlJudea Pearl gave computers a way to reason when facts are incomplete.