In the Beginning, there was ... Philosophy.

This is the second part of the episode on humour. It looks at the emotional and sociological functions of humour. Humour is a social phenomenon. The most important distinction is that between conservative and critical functions of humour. Conservative functions re-confirm us a members of a community which shares a sense of humour. Critical functions highlight deficiencies in the way we act, talk a...

Episode 33 is devoted to the question of humour or why we humans laugh. It consists of two parts. Part I discusses the pros and cons of the main theories of humour (Superiority theory; Relief theory; Play theory; Incongruity theory). Part II discusses the social functions of humour. It distinguishes a conservative from a critical function of humour. I give examples of different types of humour in...

This his episode consists of two parts. In Part I, I discuss the role of trust in personal relationships - called interpersonal trust. In the second part I consider the role of trust in people's relationships with institutions - called institutional trust . In both cases an expectation of benefits from the trustee to the truster is involved. We make inductive inferences from past experience of...

In this Episode I look at the philosophy of Stoicism , through the eyes of the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (161-180 AD). As with so many things, Stoicism goes back to the Greeks; its impact reached into the Roman period. It is much more than composure in the face of adversity. It is a practical philosophy, a way of life: how to lead a wise life. Wisdom embraces justice, rationality and control o...

The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) is famous, amongst other things, for his negative outlook on life and human nature. His pessimism was partly due to his experience of human misery and his revolt against slavery; it was also partly due to his philosophy of the Will. He saw the Will as the blind driving force of human actions and behaviour. As humans have no control over the Wi...

In this Episode, I introduce the life and work of a forgotten hero of science: Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859). In his own time he was such a famous explorer and discoverer that many of his contemporaries were influenced by his thinking, most notably Charles Darwin. And even though he is no longer as well known as Darwin today , many places, species, mountains and rivers are still named after h...

This episode looks at three pre-Darwinian accounts of the development of organic nature: the Great Chain of Being, Design arguments (Paley) and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck's 'transformatism'. All of these accounts assume, in one way or another, that the explanation of organic life requires the postulation of purpose and design in nature. This assumption is in striking contrast with mechanical explanatio...

In this episode I introduce a brief history of scepticism, that is the doubt whether we can have any certain knowledge of the external world. I start with the Greek philosopher Sextus Empiricus who lived in the second century AD. His arguments were taken up and developed by the French Renaissance writer Michel Montaigne (1533-1592). Two French philosophers - Marin Mersenne (1588-1648) and his frie...

This episode introduces the life and influential ideas of William of Ockham (1287-1347). He was a controversial figure in his own time and is famous for his principle, known as Ockham's razor. It is a principle of economy, adopted by many philosophers and scientists, including Cambridge physicist Stephen Hawking. Its modern version recommends to use as few principles as possible to explain a m...

There is the rather common view that the Middle Ages were an age of darkness, ignorance and religious intolerance. But how true is this image? This episode introduces the Middle Ages (1000 AD-1543) as a period of intellectual vitality. It gave rise natural philosophy, which is the precursor of modern science. It accomplished two things. The first task was to make the Bible and Christian religion c...

This episode discusses scientific mistakes and blunders which have occurred in the history of science. Mistakes may be based on false information or mistaken assumptions, in which case they are honest mistakes. But if they are based on deliberate misinformation and incompetence, they are downright blunders. We can and should learn from mistakes but blunders are bad news because they have disastrou...

Popper's Critical Rationalism consists of two parts: 1) a critical attitude towards science; 2) a critical attitude towards politics. The critical attitude towards science meant that he regarded all scientific knowledge as fallible. No certainty exists in science. All scientific theories are subject to severe tests and are constantly facing the evidence. This is his famous method of falsifiabi...

This episode focuses on the Enlightenment in France and Germany. Whilst it shares the basic Enlightenment ideals, there are national characteristics. In France the Enlightenment was shaped by the experience of the Ancien Regime. It is strong opposition to the power of the Catholic Church and Absolute Monarchy. An outstanding achievement of the French Enlightenment is the publication of the Encyclo...

The Enlightenment (1688-1804) emerged in three European countries, in rough chronological order in Britain, then France and it ended in Germany. This episode (Part I) starts with a general characterisation of the Enlightenment and then focuses on the Enlightenment in Britain. The Enlightenment owes its momentum to the Scientific Revolution, which brought about a fundamental change in world views....

In this Episode I address the question of whether populism poses a danger to a democratic, open society. I define populism as charismatic leadership with a particular vision. I make a distinction between a democratic regime - with emphasis on the rule of law, the independence of institutions and freedom - and an open society - with the emphasis on accountability, contestability and critical scruti...

In the last episode on Human Rights, I left open the question of whether Civil Disobedience should count as a fundamental human right. A good example of this debate occurs in the film The Great Debaters (2007). After having defined civil disobedience (following the philosophers John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas), I argue that it should count as a fundamental human right - under specified conditions:...

Following on from the last two episodes, which broadly dealt with issues of human freedom and justice, the question of the need for human rights arises naturally. I distinguish civil from human rights. Civil rights exist on the national level and they may differ from country to country. I propose three criteria to differentiate them from human or universal rights, which, as the term suggests, are...

In this episode I briefly describe the events of the French Revolution and then turn my attention to the life and times of two prominent 'engaged philosophers': Voltaire and the Marquis de Condorcet. Both fought against the injustices of the Ancient Regime, i.e. the time prior to the French Revolution, when France was ruled by absolute monarchs. Through their active defence and rehabilitat...

The next couple of episodes continue Part I on Political Philosophy. The next two episodes will discuss the impact philosophical ideas have had on the social and political world. In the current episode (17), I start with the influence John Locke's political philosophy had on the adoption of the English Bill of Rights in the wake of the Glorious Revolution (1688), as well as French philosophers...

The question of whether humans enjoy free will (or not) has occupied people for centuries. Science has not yet found a definitive answer but we are all familiar with the phenomenon. When we want something (a mental event), we get up to get it (a physical event). When something happens to us (a physical event), we react with, say, sadness or joy (a mental event). How is this possible? How can physi...

In previous Episodes, I have made many references to the laws of nature. Laws of nature are the regularities in the natural world, which exist independently of our knowledge of them. But in the textbooks of science you find many equations which encode the natural regularities. These equations are the laws of science. The laws of science are only approximately true because the employment of mathema...

In this Episode, I discuss some systematic ways in which discoveries are made in science. This follows on from Episode 13 (A, B) which introduced thought and real experiments. In this Episode I look at methods - systematic ways - to go about scientific discoveries. There are three methods: two different forms of induction and deduction. Induction works either by inferring from some to all cases (f...

Part B of this Episode concentrates on imaginary and real experiments in the modern era. I introduce Foucaults' famous pendulum experiment (1859), which gave a visual demonstration that the Earth turns on its own axis. I propose that thought experiments answer 'what-if' questions about the natural world. They are models of possible worlds. The episode finishes with a discussion of the...

Episode 13 (A, B) is devoted to the topic of experiments in science: thought experiments and real experiments. They are as important as grand scientific theories. Part A focuses on thought and real experiments from antiquity to the 17th century. I explain the function of such experiments and discuss some famous examples. How do you 'prove' that the universe if infinite (Archytas of Tarentu...

This episode is devoted to the topic of time travel; time travel in a conventional sense, which relies on time machines to travel either into the future or the past. (I do not discuss forms of time travel, which may be permissible by the laws of physics.) It is advisable to separate these two different scenarios. Time travel into the future - as in H. G. Wells's novel The Time Machine - leads...