Curated playlist
Philosophers of science
- Albert EinsteinAlbert Einstein once spent his days examining patents for gravel sorters.
- AristotleOnly around a third of Aristotle's original writings survive, and none was meant to be published.
- Galileo GalileiGalileo watched four points of light move beside Jupiter. In January 1610 he realized they were moons circling it.
- Jean-Jacques RousseauRousseau refused a king's pension after Louis XV loved his opera. Friends were exasperated by his choice.
- AvicennaIn a fortress prison, Avicenna imagined a man falling through air. It became known as the Floating Man.
- Karl MarxKarl Marx left an estate valued at just 250 pounds when he died in 1883. He died stateless in London at 64.
- Baruch SpinozaBaruch Spinoza was expelled from his Jewish community at twenty-three, and it still refuses him back.
- Erwin SchrödingerErwin Schrödinger formulated his wave equation at a Swiss sanatorium in Arosa. He was ill with tuberculosis.
- Rudolf CarnapRudolf Carnap argued that most deep philosophical questions were meaningless.
- AverroesIn 1169, a caliph asked the philosopher Averroes if the heavens had a beginning.
- Karl JaspersKarl Jaspers hid in Heidelberg through the Nazi years because his wife was Jewish.
- Niels BohrNiels Bohr passed out in the bomb bay of a British plane over Norway. His flying helmet was too small for him to wear.
- A. J. AyerA. J. Ayer once told Mike Tyson to talk like a rational man. The philosopher stepped in at a 1987 party.
- 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.