Curated category
Pantheists
- Albert EinsteinWhen Albert Einstein was five and sick in bed, his father brought him a compass. The trembling needle, always pointing the same way, convinced the boy that…
- Johann Wolfgang von GoetheOn the 13th of October 1806, Napoleon's army poured into Weimar, and the least disciplined of the French soldiers, the so-called spoon guards, broke into the…
- Thomas HardyThomas Hardy died at Max Gate on the 11th of January 1928, but not before dictating one final poem to his wife from his deathbed.
- Carl JungCarl Gustav Jung was born on the 26th of July 1875 in Kesswil, a small village in the Swiss canton of Thurgau, the first child his parents would raise to…
- Baruch SpinozaBaruch Spinoza was born on the 24th of November 1632 into an Amsterdam family that had survived the Portuguese Inquisition by hiding their faith for…
- Carl SaganCarl Sagan grew up in a modest Bensonhurst apartment with parents who, by his own account, "knew almost nothing about science." Yet it was precisely those…
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich HegelOn the day before the Battle of Jena, in October 1806, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel watched Napoleon ride out of the city on horseback.
- David Ben-GurionDavid Ben-Gurion was born David Grün in Płońsk, a small town that was then part of the Russian Empire, on the 16th of October 1886.
- Helena BlavatskyHelena Blavatsky preferred to be known by three letters: HPB. The sobriquet came from her friend Henry Steel Olcott, and it stuck to a woman who spoke…
- Hermann WeylWhenever Michael Atiyah turned his attention to a mathematical topic, he kept running into the same name. He found that Hermann Weyl had already been there…
- Yukio MishimaOn the 25th of November 1970, Yukio Mishima stepped onto a balcony at a military base in central Tokyo and shouted to the soldiers below, "Where has the…
- Adi ShankaraAdi Shankara is today often called the most important Indian philosopher, yet reliable information on his actual life is scant.
- Nicholas of CusaNicholas of Cusa was born in 1401 in the small town of Kues, tucked into southwestern Germany along the Moselle River, the second child of a prosperous boat…
- Alan WattsAlan Wilson Watts was born on the 6th of January 1915 in Chislehurst, Kent, into a middle-class household at Rowan Tree Cottage, 3 Holbrook Lane, where his…