David Hume
David Hume was a Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, historian and essayist, best known today for his influential system of philosophical empiricism and naturalism. Hume's empiricist approach to philosophy places him with John Locke, George Berkeley, Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes as a British Empiricist. Beginning with his A Treatise of Human Nature, Hume strove to create a total naturalistic science of man that examined the psychological basis of human nature. Against philosophical rationalists, Hume held that passion rather than reason governs human behaviour. Hume argued against the existence of innate ideas, positing that all human knowledge is founded in experience. In what is sometimes referred to as Hume's problem of induction, he argued that inductive reasoning and belief in causality cannot be justified rationally; this is because we can never perceive that one event causes another, but only that the two are always conjoined. Accordingly, to draw any causal inferences from past experience it is necessary to presuppose that the future will resemble the past, a presupposition which cannot itself be grounded in prior experience.
Hume's opposition to the teleological argument for God's existence, the argument from design, is regarded as the most intellectually significant attempt to rebut the argument prior to Darwinism. Hume was a sentimentalist who held that ethics are based on emotion or sentiment rather than abstract moral principle, famously proclaiming that "Reason is, ought only to be the slave of the passions". Hume's moral theory has been seen as a unique attempt to synthesise the modern sentimentalist moral tradition to which Hume belonged, with the virtue ethics tradition of ancient philosophy, with which Hume concurred in regarding traits of character, rather than acts or their consequences, as the proper objects of moral evaluation. Hume maintained an early commitment to naturalistic explanations of moral phenomena, is taken to have first expounded the is–ought problem, or the idea that a statement of fact alone can never give rise to a normative conclusion of what ought to be done. Hume denied that humans have an actual conception of the self, positing that we experience only a bundle of sensations, that the self is nothing more than this bundle of causally-connected perceptions.
Hume's compatibilist theory of free will takes causal determinism as compatible with human freedom. Hume influenced utilitarianism, logical positivism, Immanuel Kant, the philosophy of science, early analytic philosophy, cognitive science and other movements and thinkers. Kant himself credited Hume as the spur to his philosophical thought who had awakened him from his "dogmatic slumbers". Hume was the second of two sons born to Joseph Home of Ninewells, an advocate, his wife The Hon. Katherine, daughter of Sir David Falconer, he was born on 26 April 1711 in a tenement on the north side of the Lawnmarket in Edinburgh. Hume's father died when Hume was a child, just after his second birthday, he was raised by his mother, who never remarried, he changed the spelling of his name in 1734, because of the fact that his surname "Home", pronounced "Hume", was not known in England. Throughout his life Hume, who never married, spent time at his family home at Chirnside in Berwickshire, which had belonged to the family since the sixteenth century.
His finances as a young man were "slender". His family was not rich, and, as a younger son, he had little patrimony to live on, he was therefore forced to make a living somehow. Hume attended the University of Edinburgh at the unusually early age of 12 at a time when 14 was normal. At first, because of his family, he considered a career in law, but came to have, in his words, "an insurmountable aversion to everything but the pursuits of Philosophy and general Learning, he had little respect for the professors of his time, telling a friend in 1735 that "there is nothing to be learnt from a Professor, not to be met with in Books". Hume did not graduate. Aged around 18, he made a philosophical discovery that opened up to him "a new Scene of Thought", which inspired him "to throw up every other Pleasure or Business to apply to it", he did not recount what this scene was, commentators have offered a variety of speculations. One popular interpretation, prominent in contemporary Hume scholarship, is that the new "scene of thought" was Hume's realization that Francis Hutcheson's "moral sense" theory of morality could be applied to the understanding as well.
Due to this inspiration, Hume set out to spend a minimum of 10 years writing. He soon came to the verge of a mental breakdown, suffering from what a doctor diagnosed as the "Disease of the Learned". Hume wrote that it started with a coldness, which he attributed to a "Laziness of Temper", that lasted about nine months; some scurvy spots broke out on his fingers. This was. Hume wrote that he "went under a Course of Bitters and Anti-Hysteric Pills", taken along with a pint of claret every day. Hume decided to have a more active life to better continue his learning, his health improved somewhat, but in 1731 he was afflicted with a ravenous appetite and palpitations of the heart. After eating well for a time, he went from being "tall, lean and ra
Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge
Sidney Sussex College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge in England. The college was founded in 1596 under the terms of the will of Frances Sidney, Countess of Sussex and named after its foundress, it was from its inception an avowedly Protestant foundation. In her will, Lady Sussex left the sum of £5,000 together with some plate to found a new college at Cambridge University "to be called the Lady Frances Sidney Sussex College", her executors Sir John Harington and Henry Grey, 6th Earl of Kent, supervised by Archbishop John Whitgift, founded the college seven years after her death. While the college's geographic size has changed little since 1596, an additional range was added to the original E-shaped buildings in the early 17th century and the appearance of the whole college was changed in the 1820s and 1830s, under the leadership of the Master at the time, William Chafy. By the early 19th century, the buildings' original red brick was unfashionable and the hall range was suffering serious structural problems.
The opening up of coal mines on estates left to the College in the 18th century provided extra funds which were to be devoted to providing a new mathematical library and accommodation for Mathematical Exhibitioners. As a result, the exterior brick was covered with a layer of cement, the existing buildings were heightened and the architectural effect was heightened, under the supervision of Sir Jeffry Wyatville. In the late nineteenth century, the college's finances received a further boost from the development of the resort of Cleethorpes on College land on the Lincolnshire coast, purchased in 1616, following a bequest for the benefit of scholars and fellows by Peter Blundell, a merchant from Tiverton, Devon. A new wing added in 1891, to the designs of John Loughborough Pearson, is stylistically richer than the original buildings and has stone staircases whereas the stairs in the older buildings are made of timber. In the early twentieth century, a High Church group among the Fellows were instrumental in the rebuilding and enlargement of the chapel, provided with a richly carved interior in late seventeenth-century style, designed by T. H. Lyon, somewhat at odds with the college's original Puritan ethos.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, E. H. Griffiths wrote a ten verse song dedicated to Sidney Sussex; each verse systematically identifies dismisses other Cambridge colleges for their faults, before settling on Sidney as the best college of all. The chorus exhorts the audience:'Go travel round the town, my friend, whichever way you please, From Downing up to Trinity, from Peterhouse to Caius: Then seek a little College just beside a busy street, Its name is Sidney Sussex, you'll find it Bad to Beat.' Sidney Sussex is recognised as one of the more classical Cambridge colleges. Its current student body consists of 350 undergraduate students and 190 graduates. Academically, Sidney Sussex has tended towards a mid-table position in the unofficial Tompkins Table. However, the college has traditionally excelled in certain subjects, notably Mathematics, History and Law, it is known for the high standard of pastoral support from the Tutorial team, a sense of mutual support from students doing the same subject.
The college ranks fourth highest amongst Cambridge colleges in Nobel Prizes won by alumni. The Choir of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge was nominated for a 2013 Gramophone Award in recognition of their disc of the music of Thomas Weelkes; the choir tours most to the United States, in July 2018. In the television show University Challenge, Sidney Sussex had a winning team in both 1971 and 1978–79; the 1978 team, comprising John Gilmore, John Adams, David Lidington, Nick Graham, went on to win the "Champion of Champions" University Challenge reunion competition in 2002. The college last appeared on the television show in 2018, it is known for producing a well-regarded May Ball for a smaller college. Notably, students created an artificial lake and canal in 2010, when the ball had a Venetian theme, to enable punting at the landlocked college. Recent themes have included'Light' and'Beyond'; as with many of the smaller colleges, Sidney Sussex does not run a May Ball every year, instead running a biennial May Ball, on numbered years.
On odd numbered years, the college hosted an Arts Festival, which welcomed anyone in Cambridge, town or gown, to attend. Notable guest speakers at the Sidney Arts Festival include Stephen Fry, in 2015. However, for 2017 it was decided instead to hold a June Event. June Events are similar to a May Ball, but are smaller with a lower ticket price, shorter running time; the Confraternitas Historica, or Confraternitas Historica Dominae Franciscae Comitis Sussexiae, is the history society of Sidney Sussex College and is reputed to be the longest-running student history society in Europe, having existed since 1910. In fact, no meetings were held from 1914 to 1919 but since, during the First World War, "the University itself ceased to function... the hiatus of 1914-19 is not counted as a break in the continuity of the society". The Latin name of the society reflects the tastes of Jack Reynolds, the High Church Fellow who presided over its creation, who "endowed the Society with an elaborate Latin initiation ceremony".
Rather than being led by a President, the student in charge of the society is instead'Princeps'. Other society roles include the'Magister,"Tribune,"Pontifex Maximus,' and'Comes'. Furthermore, during society meetings all attendees are referred to in an ega
Richard Price
Richard Price was a Welsh moral philosopher, nonconformist preacher and mathematician. He was a political pamphleteer, active in radical and liberal causes such as the American Revolution, he was well-connected and fostered communication between a large number of people, including several of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Price spent most of his adult life as minister of Newington Green Unitarian Church, on the outskirts of London, he wrote on issues of demography and finance, was a Fellow of the Royal Society. Richard Price was the son of a dissenting minister, his mother was his father's second wife. Richard was born at Tyn Ton, a farmhouse in the village of Llangeinor, Wales, he was educated then at Neath and Pen-twyn. He studied under Vavasor Griffiths at Talgarth, he left Wales for England, where he spent the rest of his life. He studied with the dissenting academy in Moorfields, London. Leaving the academy in 1744, Price became chaplain and companion to George Streatfield at Stoke Newington a village just north of London.
He held the lectureship at Old Jewry, where Samuel Chandler was minister. Streatfield's death and that of an uncle in 1757 improved his circumstances, on 16 June 1757 he married Sarah Blundell of Belgrave in Leicestershire. In 1758 Price moved to Newington Green, took up residence in No. 54 the Green, in the middle of a terrace then a hundred years old. Price became minister to the Newington Green meeting-house, a church that continues today as Newington Green Unitarian Church. Among the congregation were Samuel Vaughan and his family. Price had Thomas Amory as preaching colleague from 1770. When, in 1770, Price became morning preacher at the Gravel Pit Chapel in Hackney, he continued his afternoon sermons at Newington Green, he accepted duties at the meeting house in Old Jewry. A close friend of Price was Thomas Rogers, father of Samuel Rogers, a merchant turned banker who had married into a long-established Dissenting family and lived at No. 56 the Green. More than once and the elder Rogers rode on horseback to Wales.
Another was the Rev. James Burgh, author of The Dignity of Human Nature and Thoughts on Education, who opened his Dissenting Academy on the green in 1750 and sent his pupils to Price's sermons. Price and Burgh formed a dining club, eating at each other's houses in rotation. Price and Rogers joined the Society for Constitutional Information; the "Bowood circle" was a group of liberal intellectuals around Lord Shelburne, named after Bowood House, his seat in Wiltshire. Price met Shelburne in or shortly after 1767, or was introduced by his wife Elizabeth Montagu, a leader of the Blue Stocking intellectual women, after the publication of his Four Dissertations in that year. In 1771 Price had Shelburne employ Thomas Jervis. Another member of the circle was Benjamin Vaughan. In 1772 Price recruited Joseph Priestley, who came to work for Shelburne as librarian from 1773; the group that Benjamin Franklin christened the "Club of Honest Whigs" was an informal dining group around John Canton. It met in St Paul's Churchyard, at the London Coffee House.
Price and Sir John Pringle were members, as were Benjamin Vaughan. At home, or at his church itself, Price was visited by Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, he knew the philosophers David Hume and Adam Smith. Among activists, the prison reformer John Howard counted Price as a close friend. Others acknowledged their debt to Price, such as the Unitarian theologians William Ellery Channing and Theophilus Lindsey; when Lindsey resigned his living and moved to London to create an avowedly Unitarian congregation Price played a role in finding and securing the premises for what became Essex Street Chapel. At the end of the 1770s Price and Lindsey were concerned about the contraction of dissent, at least in the London area. With Andrew Kippis and others, they established the Society for Promoting Knowledge of the Scriptures in 1783. Price and Priestley took diverging views on metaphysics. In 1778 appeared a published correspondence, A Free Discussion on the Doctrines of Materialism and Philosophical Necessity.
Price maintained, in opposition to Priestley, the free agency of man and the unity and immateriality of the human soul. Price's opinions were Arian, Priestley's were Socinian. Mary Wollstonecraft moved her fledgling school for girls from Islington to Newington Green in 1784, with patron Mrs Burgh, widow of Price's friend James Burgh. Wollstonecraft an Anglican, attended Price's services, where believers of all kinds were welcomed; the Rational Dissenters appealed to Wollstonecraft: they were hard-working, critical but uncynical, respectful towards women, proved kinder to her than her own family. Price is believed to have helped her with money to go to Lisbon to see her close friend Fanny Blood. Wollstonecraft was unpublished: through Price she met the radical publisher Joseph Johnson; the ideas Wollstonecraft ingested from the sermons at Newington Green pushed her towards a political awakening. She published A Vindication of the Rights of Men, a response to Burke's denunciation of the French Revolution and attack on Price.
Coton Clanford
Coton Clanford is a small dispersed Staffordshire village lying in rolling countryside 3 miles due west of Stafford, England and 1 mile southeast of Seighford. The name of the village is sometimes hyphenated to Coton-Clanford, appearing this way on some cottage names locally; the population for this village as taken at the 2011 census can be found under Seighford. It lies midway between 1 1/2 miles to the north and the A518 1 1/2 miles to the south; the village has no shops, public houses or church, comprising only a few scattered houses and cottages, several dairy farms and a long disused 19th century chapel. This Primitive Methodist chapel was built in 1884, the foundation stone being laid 30 October 1884; the Chapel records 1891–1907, Coton Clanford Society and Methodist chapel minute books, 1903-1929, are stored at Stafford Record Office. Judging from the modest dimensions of this small building it is hard to imagine it having the capacity for a congregation of more than 30 worshippers; the village straddles Clanford Brook, which meanders southeastwards from Ranton towards Little Aston and Doxey and is bounded to the north by the southeastern edge of Seighford airfield and several large woods.
In this village the English philosopher and cleric, William Wollaston, was born in 1659. Located here is Clanford Hall, a three-storey, half-timbered Tudor mansion in fine condition now used as a farmhouse; the building, dated 1684, is listed Grade II* and is a good example of 17th century vernacular architecture of the area. It is timber framed with a tiled roof and brick stacks, with two storeys and an attic, four-storeyed on the East, it is restored in brick and colour-washed, with wood finials to gables and ornamental timbering at front and restored timbering at rear. There are casements and wood mullioned windows with modern leaded lights; the house has exposed ceiling beams. Map sources for Coton Clanford
National Portrait Gallery, London
The National Portrait Gallery is an art gallery in London housing a collection of portraits of important and famous British people. It was the first portrait gallery in the world when it opened in 1856; the gallery moved in 1896 to its current site at St Martin's Place, off Trafalgar Square, adjoining the National Gallery. It has been expanded twice since then; the National Portrait Gallery has regional outposts at Beningbrough Hall in Yorkshire and Montacute House in Somerset. It is unconnected to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh, with which its remit overlaps; the gallery is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture and Sport. The gallery houses portraits of important and famous British people, selected on the basis of the significance of the sitter, not that of the artist; the collection includes photographs and caricatures as well as paintings and sculpture. One of its best-known images is the Chandos portrait, the most famous portrait of William Shakespeare although there is some uncertainty about whether the painting is of the playwright.
Not all of the portraits are exceptional artistically, although there are self-portraits by William Hogarth, Sir Joshua Reynolds and other British artists of note. Some, such as the group portrait of the participants in the Somerset House Conference of 1604, are important historical documents in their own right; the curiosity value is greater than the artistic worth of a work, as in the case of the anamorphic portrait of Edward VI by William Scrots, Patrick Branwell Brontë's painting of his sisters Charlotte and Anne, or a sculpture of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in medieval costume. Portraits of living figures were allowed from 1969. In addition to its permanent galleries of historical portraits, the National Portrait Gallery exhibits a changing selection of contemporary work, stages exhibitions of portrait art by individual artists and hosts the annual BP Portrait Prize competition; the three people responsible for the founding of the National Portrait Gallery are commemorated with busts over the main entrance.
At centre is Philip Henry Stanhope, 4th Earl Stanhope, with his supporters on either side, Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay and Thomas Carlyle. It was Stanhope who, in 1846 as a Member of Parliament, first proposed the idea of a National Portrait Gallery, it was not until his third attempt, in 1856, this time from the House of Lords, that the proposal was accepted. With Queen Victoria's approval, the House of Commons set aside a sum of £2000 to establish the gallery; as well as Stanhope and Macaulay, the founder Trustees included Benjamin Disraeli and Lord Ellesmere. It was the latter. Carlyle became a trustee after the death of Ellesmere in 1857. For the first 40 years, the gallery was housed in various locations in London; the first 13 years were spent at Westminster. There, the collection increased in size from 57 to 208 items, the number of visitors from 5,300 to 34,500. In 1869, the collection moved to Exhibition Road and buildings managed by the Royal Horticultural Society. Following a fire in those buildings, the collection was moved in 1885, this time to the Bethnal Green Museum.
This location was unsuitable due to its distance from the West End and lack of waterproofing. Following calls for a new location to be found, the government accepted an offer of funds from the philanthropist William Henry Alexander. Alexander donated £60,000 followed by another £20,000, chose the architect, Ewan Christian; the government provided the new site, St Martin's Place, adjacent to the National Gallery, £16,000. The buildings, faced in Portland stone, were constructed by Son. Both the architect, Ewan Christian, the gallery's first director, George Scharf, died shortly before the new building was completed; the gallery opened at its new location on 4 April 1896. The site has since been expanded twice; the first extension, in 1933, was funded by Lord Duveen, resulted in the wing by architect Sir Richard Allison on a site occupied by St George's Barracks running along Orange Street. In February 1909, a murder–suicide took place in a gallery known as the Arctic Room. In an planned attack, John Tempest Dawson, aged 70, shot his 58 year–old wife, Nannie Caskie.
His wife died in hospital several hours later. Both were American nationals. Evidence at the inquest suggested that Dawson, a wealthy and well–travelled man, was suffering from a Persecutory delusion; the incident came to public attention in 2010 when the Gallery's archive was put on-line as this included a personal account of the event by James Donald Milner the Assistant Director of the Gallery. The collections of the National Portrait Gallery were stored at Mentmore Towers in Buckinghamshire during the Second World War, along with pieces from the Royal Collection and paintings from Speaker's House in the Palace of Westminster; the second extension was funded by Sir Christopher Ondaatje and a £12m Heritage Lottery Fund grant, was designed by London-based architects Edward Jones and Jeremy Dixon. The Ondaatje Wing opened in 2000 and occupies a narrow space of land between the two 19th-century buildings of the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery, is notable for its immense, two-storey escalator that takes visitors to the earliest part of the collection, the Tudor portraits.
In January 2008, the Gallery received its largest single donation to date
John Locke
John Locke was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers and known as the "Father of Liberalism". Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Sir Francis Bacon, he is important to social contract theory, his work affected the development of epistemology and political philosophy. His writings influenced Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, as well as the American revolutionaries, his contributions to classical republicanism and liberal theory are reflected in the United States Declaration of Independence. Locke's theory of mind is cited as the origin of modern conceptions of identity and the self, figuring prominently in the work of philosophers such as David Hume and Immanuel Kant. Locke was the first to define the self through a continuity of consciousness, he postulated that, at birth, the mind was a blank tabula rasa. Contrary to Cartesian philosophy based on pre-existing concepts, he maintained that we are born without innate ideas, that knowledge is instead determined only by experience derived from sense perception.
This is now known as empiricism. An example of Locke's belief in empiricism can be seen in his quote, "whatever I write, as soon as I discover it not to be true, my hand shall be the forwardest to throw it into the fire." This shows the ideology of science in his observations in that something must be capable of being tested and that nothing is exempt from being disproven. Challenging the work of others, Locke is said to have established the method of introspection, or observing the emotions and behaviours of one's self. Locke's father called John, was an attorney who served as clerk to the Justices of the Peace in Chew Magna, his mother was Agnes Keene. Both parents were Puritans. Locke was born on 29 August 1632, in a small thatched cottage by the church in Wrington, about 12 miles from Bristol, he was baptised the same day. Soon after Locke's birth, the family moved to the market town of Pensford, about seven miles south of Bristol, where Locke grew up in a rural Tudor house in Belluton. In 1647, Locke was sent to the prestigious Westminster School in London under the sponsorship of Alexander Popham, a member of Parliament and his father's former commander.
After completing studies there, he was admitted to Christ Church, Oxford, in the autumn of 1652 at the age of twenty. The dean of the college at the time was vice-chancellor of the university. Although a capable student, Locke was irritated by the undergraduate curriculum of the time, he found the works of modern philosophers, such as René Descartes, more interesting than the classical material taught at the university. Through his friend Richard Lower, whom he knew from the Westminster School, Locke was introduced to medicine and the experimental philosophy being pursued at other universities and in the Royal Society, of which he became a member. Locke was awarded a bachelor's degree in February 1656 and a master's degree in June 1658, he obtained a bachelor of medicine in February 1675, having studied medicine extensively during his time at Oxford and worked with such noted scientists and thinkers as Robert Boyle, Thomas Willis, Robert Hooke and Richard Lower. In 1666, he met Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury, who had come to Oxford seeking treatment for a liver infection.
Cooper was persuaded him to become part of his retinue. Locke had been looking for a career and in 1667 moved into Shaftesbury's home at Exeter House in London, to serve as Lord Ashley's personal physician. In London, Locke resumed his medical studies under the tutelage of Thomas Sydenham. Sydenham had a major effect on Locke's natural philosophical thinking – an effect that would become evident in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Locke's medical knowledge was put to the test when Shaftesbury's liver infection became life-threatening. Locke coordinated the advice of several physicians and was instrumental in persuading Shaftesbury to undergo surgery to remove the cyst. Shaftesbury prospered, crediting Locke with saving his life. During this time, Locke served as Secretary of the Board of Trade and Plantations and Secretary to the Lords Proprietor of Carolina, which helped to shape his ideas on international trade and economics. Shaftesbury, as a founder of the Whig movement, exerted great influence on Locke's political ideas.
Locke became involved in politics when Shaftesbury became Lord Chancellor in 1672. Following Shaftesbury's fall from favour in 1675, Locke spent some time travelling across France as tutor and medical attendant to Caleb Banks, he returned to England in 1679. Around this time, most at Shaftesbury's prompting, Locke composed the bulk of the Two Treatises of Government. While it was once thought that Locke wrote the Treatises to defend the Glorious Revolution of 1688, recent scholarship has shown that the work was composed well before this date; the work is now viewed as a more general argument against absolute monarchy and for individual consent as the basis of political legitimacy. Although Locke was associated with the influential Whigs, his ideas about natural rights and government are today considered quite revolutionary for that period in English history. Locke fled to the Netherlands in 1683, under strong suspicion of involvement in the Rye House Plot, although there is little eviden
Western philosophy
Western philosophy is the philosophical thought and work of the Western world. The term refers to the philosophical thinking of Western culture, beginning with Greek philosophy of the pre-Socratics such as Thales and Pythagoras, covering a large area of the globe; the word philosophy itself originated from the Ancient Greek: philosophia "the love of wisdom". The scope of philosophy in the ancient understanding, the writings of the ancient philosophers, were all intellectual endeavors; this included the problems of philosophy. In the pre-Socratic period, ancient philosophers first articulated questions about the "arche" of the universe. Western philosophy is said to begin in the Greek cities of western Asia Minor with Thales of Miletus, active c. 585 BC and was responsible for the opaque dictum, "all is water." His most noted students were Anaximander and Anaximenes of Miletus Pythagoras, from the island of Samos off the coast of Ionia lived in Croton in southern Italy. Pythagoreans hold that "all is number," giving formal accounts in contrast to the previous material of the Ionians.
They believe in metempsychosis, the transmigration of souls, or reincarnation. A key figure in Greek philosophy is Socrates. Socrates studied under several Sophists but transformed Greek philosophy into a branch of philosophy, still pursued today, it is said that following a visit to the Oracle of Delphi he spent much of his life questioning anyone in Athens who would engage him, in order to disprove the oracular prophecy that there would be no man wiser than Socrates. Socrates used a critical approach called the "elenchus" or Socratic method to examine people's views, he aimed to study human things: the good life, justice and virtue. Although Socrates wrote nothing himself, some of his many disciples wrote down his conversations, he was tried for corrupting the impiety by the Greek democracy. He was sentenced to death. Although his friends offered to help him escape from prison, he chose to remain in Athens and abide by his principles, his execution consisted of drinking the poison hemlock and he died in 399 BC.
Plato was a student of Socrates. Plato founded the Academy of Athens and wrote a number of dialogues, which applied the Socratic method of inquiry to examine philosophical problems; some central ideas of Plato's dialogues are the immortality of the soul, the benefits of being just, that evil is ignorance, the Theory of Forms. Forms are universal properties that constitute true reality and contrast with the changeable material things he called "becoming". Aristotle was a pupil of Plato. Aristotle was the first systematic philosopher and scientist, he wrote about physics, zoology, aesthetics, theater, rhetoric and logic. Aristotelian logic was the first type of logic to attempt to categorize every valid syllogism. Aristotle tutored Alexander the Great, who in turn conquered much of the ancient world at a rapid pace. Hellenization and Aristotelian philosophy exercised considerable influence on all subsequent Western and Middle Eastern philosophers, including Hellenistic, Byzantine, Western medieval and Islamic thinkers.
Medieval philosophy is the philosophy of Western Europe and the Middle East during the Middle Ages extending from the Christianization of the Roman Empire until the Renaissance. Medieval philosophy is defined by the rediscovery and further development of classical Greek and Hellenistic philosophy, by the need to address theological problems and to integrate the widespread sacred doctrines of Abrahamic religion with secular learning. Early medieval philosophy was influenced by the likes of Stoicism, but, above all, the philosophy of Plato himself; some problems discussed throughout this period are the relation of faith to reason, the existence and unity of God, the object of theology and metaphysics, the problems of knowledge, of universals, of individuation. The prominent figure of this period was Augustine of Hippo who adopted Plato's thought and Christianized it in the 4th century and whose influence dominated medieval philosophy up to end of the era but was checked with the arrival of Aristotle's texts.
Augustinianism was the preferred starting point for most philosophers up until the 13th century. The Carolingian Renaissance of the 8th/9th century was fed by Church missionaries travelling from Ireland, most notably John Scotus Eriugena, a Neoplatonic philosopher; the modern university system has roots in the European medieval university, created in Italy and evolved from Catholic Cathedral schools for the clergy during the High Middle Ages. Thomas Aquinas, an academic philosopher and the father of Thomism, was immensely influential in Catholic Europe. Philosophers from the Middle Ages include the Christian philosophers Augustine of Hippo, Anselm, Gilbert de la Porrée, Peter Abelard, Roger Bacon, Thomas Aq
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica. 28 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Stephen, Leslie (1900). "Wollaston, William (1660-1724)". In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. 62. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
