Curated playlist
Philosophers of science
- Albert EinsteinGerman-born theoretical physicist (1879–1955)
- AristotleAncient Greek scholars gave Aristotle a name reserved for one man: among medieval Muslim scholars he was "The First Teacher", and to Christians like Thomas Aquinas he was simply "The Philosopher". He lived from 384 to 322 BC, and according…
- Galileo GalileiGalileo Galilei was born in Pisa on the 15th of February 1564, the first of six children of a leading lutenist. He died on the 8th of January 1642, aged 77, after a fever and heart palpitations. Between those two dates lived a man who…
- Jean-Jacques RousseauJean-Jacques Rousseau came into the world barely breathing. "I was born almost dying, they had little hope of saving me," he later wrote of his arrival in the Republic of Geneva on the 28th of June 1712. Nine days later his mother was dead…
- AvicennaBy the age of ten, Avicenna had memorized the entire Quran. He was born around 980 in the village of Afshana in Transoxiana, into a Persian family, and his curiosity would carry him through the libraries of Balkh, Khwarazm, Gorgan, Rey,…
- Karl MarxOn the 14th of March 1883, at a quarter to three in the afternoon, Friedrich Engels left Karl Marx alone in his armchair for scarcely two minutes. When he returned, he found his lifelong friend peacefully gone to sleep, but forever. The…
- 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 generations. By the time he was twenty-three, he had been expelled from his own community…
- Erwin SchrödingerErwin Schrödinger was born on the 12th of August 1887 in Vienna, and by the time he died on the 4th of January 1961, he had left behind an equation that altered how humanity understands the fabric of reality. He had also coined a phrase -…
- Rudolf CarnapRudolf Carnap was born on the 18th of May 1891 in Ronsdorf, in what is now the city of Wuppertal, Germany. At the age of 14, he taught himself Esperanto and attended the World Congress of Esperanto in Dresden in 1908. That detail says…
- AverroesAverroes was born in Córdoba on the 14th of April 1126, into a family whose name was synonymous with legal authority. His grandfather had been the city's chief judge and imam of the Great Mosque. His father held the same office. And yet,…
- Karl JaspersKarl Jaspers died on the 26th of February 1969 -- his wife Gertrud's 90th birthday. That detail is small, but it says something. The two of them had survived the Nazi years together, hiding in Heidelberg while friends quietly kept them…
- Niels BohrNiels Bohr once described the tension at the heart of all good teaching as the struggle between "Klarheit und Wahrheit" - clarity and truth. It was a conflict he never entirely resolved, and it drove him to build an entirely new picture of…
- A. J. AyerA. J. Ayer was 26 years old when he published a book that told most of philosophy to sit down and be quiet. Language, Truth, and Logic, which appeared in 1936, declared that any statement unable to pass a test of logical or empirical…
- José Ortega y GassetJosé Ortega y Gasset was born on the 9th of May 1883 in Madrid, into a family that sat at the center of Spanish public life. His father ran the newspaper El Imparcial, which belonged to the family of his mother, Dolores Gasset. That…
- Michel WeberMichel Weber, born in 1963, arrived at philosophy by way of applied economics. He began at Saint-Louis University in Brussels, earning a degree in commercial engineering in 1986, before crossing the city's intellectual landscape to the…