HoP 433 - Nature’s Mystery - Science in Renaissance England

Fray Luis de Leon, Antonio Nebrija, Beatriz Galindo and other scholars bring the Renaissance to Spain.

In this interview we learn about the main issues in modern-day philosophy of disability, and the relevance of this topic for the European encounter with the Americas.

Bartholomé De las Casas argues against opponents, like Sepúlveda, who believed that Europeans had a legal and moral right to rule over and exploit the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

Iberian expeditions to the Americas inspire scientists, and Matteo Ricci’s religious mission to Asia becomes an encounter between European and Chinese philosophy.

How religious persecution and censorship shaped the context of philosophy in Catholic Europe in the sixteenth century.

How the Counter-Reformation or Catholic Reformation created a context for philosophy among Catholics, especially in Spain, Portugal, and Italy.

An expert on Renaissance alchemy tells us how this art related to philosophy at the time... and how she has tried to reproduce its results!

Our last figure of the English Renaissance undertakes daring investigations of chemistry, medicine, agriculture, and cosmology – and gets accused of magic and Rosicrucianism.

The cosmological and methodological implications of breakthroughs in the understanding of magnetism and electricity at the turn of the 17th century.

Changing ideas about eyesight, light, mirror images, and refraction – and the skeptical worries they may have inspired.