Lecture 02: Continental Skepticism
The focus of this lecture is continental scepticism, primarily a French movement influenced by Deism, and its main proponents: Voltaire and Rousseau.
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2016-05-12
Explore "2016-05-12" with insightful episodes like "Lecture 02: Continental Skepticism", "The history of the future", "The Don Fowler Lecture 2016: Interpretation and the Metaphor of Authority" and "What We Cannot Know - Marcus du Sautoy" from podcasts like ""Ian Ramsey Centre: The Great Debate", "St John's College", "Faculty of Classics" and "The Secrets of Mathematics"" and more!
Episodes (4)
The history of the future
The founders lecture 2016, by eminent historian and Honorary Fellow, Professor Sir Brian Harrison, FBA. The talk explores changing attitudes to the future and the reasons for them. This involves thinking about the changing relationship between past, present and future, and studying the attitudes and activities of people and professions claiming to be able to predict or even influence the future – such as statisticians, planners, demographers, actuaries, inventors, authors of utopias and dystopias, and religious visionaries. The lecture aims to set in perspective the importance (or otherwise) of historical study.
The Don Fowler Lecture 2016: Interpretation and the Metaphor of Authority
The 2016 Don Fowler Memorial Lecture, delivered by Professor Alison Sharrock of the University of Manchester. The Don Fowler Memorial Lecture Series was founded in 2000 in in memory of former Classics Fellow of Jesus, Don Paul Fowler, who died in 1999 at the age of 47. The annual lecture series in his name, hosted by Jesus College and inaugurated by a lecture delivered in May 2001 by Professor Stephen Hinds of the University of Washington, has established itself as the foremost public lecture series on Latin literature worldwide.
What We Cannot Know - Marcus du Sautoy
Science is giving us unprecedented insight into the big questions that have challenged humanity. Where did we come from? What is the ultimate destiny of the universe? What are the building blocks of the physical world? What is consciousness?
'What We Cannot Know' asks us to rein in this unbridled enthusiasm for the power of science. Are there limits to what we can discover about our physical universe? Are some regions of the future beyond the predictive powers of science and mathematics? Are there ideas so complex that they are beyond the conception of our finite human brains? Can brains even investigate themselves or does the analysis enter an infinite loop from which it is impossible to rescue itself?
To coincide with the launch of his new book of the same title, Marcus du Sautoy will be answering (or not answering) those questions