A wave of recent publication connected to Hugh Trevor-Roper offers cause to take stock of his life and legacy. He is an awkward subject because his output was so protean, but a compelling one because of his significance for the resurgence of the history of ideas in Britain after 1945. The article argues that the formative period in Trevor-Roper's life was 1945–57, a period curiously neglected hit her to. It was at this time that the (...) pioneered a history of ideas conceived above all as the study of European liberal and humanist tradition. Analysis of the relative importance of contemporary and early modern history in his oeuvre finds that, while the experience of Hitler and the Cold War was formative, it was not decisive. Trevor-Roper was at heart an early modernist who did not abjure specialization. However, he insisted that specialized study must be accompanied by “philosophical” reflection on the working sofa constant human nature present throughout history, a type of reflection best pursued by reading classical historians such as Gibbon and Burckhardt. Yet this imperative in turn fostered purely historical research into the history of historical writing–another branch of the history of ideas. (shrink)

This is the second and final volume of manuscripts by or relating to Thomas Robert Malthus that are now held at Kanto Gakuen University in Japan. Volume I contains 75 items of correspondence, while Volume II contains transcriptions of further original manuscripts, including: four of Malthus' sermons; his diary of a tour of the Lake District; an extensive set of calculations in the bullion trade, suggesting that he was giving serious thought to becoming a bullion trader on his own account; (...) lecture notes on European history from the fifth to the tenth century; his wife's diary of their holiday in Scotland in 1826 and an essay on foreign trade. These previously unknown and unpublished manuscripts promise insights into his intellectual development and the events and circumstances of his life, as well as glimpses of the lifestyle of his wider family and contemporaries. (shrink)

This is the second and final volume of manuscripts by or relating to Thomas Robert Malthus that are now held at Kanto Gakuen University in Japan. Volume I contains 75 items of correspondence, while Volume II contains transcriptions of further original manuscripts, including: four of Malthus' sermons; his diary of a tour of the Lake District; an extensive set of calculations in the bullion trade, suggesting that he was giving serious thought to becoming a bullion trader on his own account; (...) lecture notes on European history from the fifth to the tenth century; his wife's diary of their holiday in Scotland in 1826 and an essay on foreign trade. These previously unknown and unpublished manuscripts promise insights into his intellectual development and the events and circumstances of his life, as well as glimpses of the lifestyle of his wider family and contemporaries. (shrink)

This is the second and final volume of manuscripts by or relating to Thomas Robert Malthus that are now held at Kanto Gakuen University in Japan. Volume I contains 75 items of correspondence, while Volume II contains transcriptions of further original manuscripts, including: four of Malthus' sermons; his diary of a tour of the Lake District; an extensive set of calculations in the bullion trade, suggesting that he was giving serious thought to becoming a bullion trader on his own account; (...) lecture notes on European history from the fifth to the tenth century; his wife's diary of their holiday in Scotland in 1826 and an essay on foreign trade. These previously unknown and unpublished manuscripts promise insights into his intellectual development and the events and circumstances of his life, as well as glimpses of the lifestyle of his wider family and contemporaries. (shrink)

This volume comprises a collection of manuscripts by or relating to T. R. Malthus, recently discovered in the estate of a distant nephew, and previously unpublished. They consist of correspondence, sermons, essays and lecture notes on political economy and history. The manuscripts provide insights into Malthus' personal life - especially his relationships with his parents and his tutors. They also give details of the books he studied as a student, and suggest hitherto unknown influences on his intellectual development. They suggest (...) a solution to the question of who or what influenced him to omit the controversial theological chapters from later editions of his Essay on Population, and his sermons present further evidence of his religious views. The manuscripts represent a remarkable discovery, more than 150 years after Malthus' death, of his correspondence and other unknown writings. (shrink)

This volume comprises a collection of manuscripts by or relating to T. R. Malthus, recently discovered in the estate of a distant nephew, and previously unpublished. They consist of correspondence, sermons, essays and lecture notes on political economy and history. The manuscripts provide insights into Malthus' personal life - especially his relationships with his parents and his tutors. They also give details of the books he studied as a student, and suggest hitherto unknown influences on his intellectual development. They suggest (...) a solution to the question of who or what influenced him to omit the controversial theological chapters from later editions of his Essay on Population, and his sermons present further evidence of his religious views. The manuscripts represent a remarkable discovery, more than 150 years after Malthus' death, of his correspondence and other unknown writings. (shrink)

The ‘Scottish Enlightenment’ has fostered a steadily growing academic industry since Duncan Forbes and Hugh Trevor-Roper put the subject on the map in the 1960s. David Hume and Adam Smith have from the start been widely considered as its leading thinkers, and their thoughts on politics have attracted an increasing amount of attention in recent years. Two new publications invite readers to reflect on the state of the art in Scottish Enlightenment studies in general, and especially Hume (...) and Smith scholarship. Christopher Berry’s Essays on Hume, Smith and the Scottish Enlightenment collects many of Berry’s pathbreaking essays from a career spanning over 40 years. The Infidel and the Professor by Dennis Rasmussen is astonishingly the first book-length treatment of the private and philosophical friendship between Hume and Smith. Both publications reflect how much Scottish Enlightenment studies have expanded since the 1960s, and the sustained interest in Hume and Smith to boot. At the same time, they also raise questions about the future of the field and what remains to be done. (shrink)

Studies examining the ways in which the training of engineers and scientists shapes their research strategies and scientific identities.

Placing Bruno—both advanced philosopher and magician burned at the stake—in the Hermetic tradition, Yates's acclaimed study gives an overview not only of Renaissance humanism but of its interplay—and conflict—with magic and occult practices. "Among those who have explored the intellectual world of the sixteenth century no one in England can rival Miss Yates. Wherever she looks, she illuminates. Now she has looked on Bruno. This brilliant book takes time to digest, but it is an intellectual adventure to read it. Historians (...) of ideas, of religion, and of science will study it. Some of them, after reading it, will have to think again.... For Miss Yates has put Bruno, for the first time, in his tradition, and has shown what that tradition was."—Hugh Trevor-Roper, _New Statesman_ "A decisive contribution to the understanding of Giordano Bruno, this book will probably remove a great number of misrepresentations that still plague the tormented figure of the Nolan prophet."—Giorgio de Santillana, _American Historical Review_ "Yates's book is an important addition to our knowledge of Giordano Bruno. But it is even more important, I think, as a step toward understanding the unity of the sixteenth century."—J. Bronowski, _New York Review of Books_. (shrink)

Through a survey of the discussions of the decline of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century witch-craze of Hugh Trevor-Roper, Keith Thomas and Brian Easlea, the role and impact of Balthasar Bekker, a seventeenth-century Dutch Cartesian, is shown to have been under-estimated, and not inconsiderable.

This volume assembles ten studies of the life and work of Thomas Harriot (1560-1621). These are based on lectures that have been given annually at Oriel College, Oxford since 1990, by such authorities as Hugh Trevor Roper, David Quinn and John D. North. The contributions to Thomas Harriot. An Elizabethan man of science shed new light on all the main aspects of Harriot's life and stand as an important contribution to the re-evaluation of one of the most (...) gifted and intriguing figures in early modern British science. (shrink)

Jean Bodin was a figure of great importance in European intellectual history, known as a jurist, associate of kings and courtiers in sixteenth-century France, and author of influential works in the fields of constitutional and social thought, historical writing, witchcraft, and a great deal else besides. Best known for his contribution to formulating the modern doctrine of sovereignty, Bodin was a scholar of exceptional range, whose works provoked controversy in his own time and have continued to do so down the (...) centuries. Hugh Trevor-Roper described him as 'the Aristotle, the Montesquieu of the sixteenth century, the prophet of comparative history, of political theory, of the philosophy of law, of the quantitative theory of money, and of so much else'. (shrink)

In Metaphor and Film, Trevor Whittock demonstrates that feature films are permeated by metaphors that were consciously introduced by directors. An examination of cinematic metaphor forces us to reconsider the nature of metaphor itself, and the ways by which such visual imagery can be recognised and understood, as well as interpreted. Metaphor and Film identifies the principal forms of cinematic metaphor, and also provides an analysis of the mental operations that one must bring to it. Recent developments in cognitive (...) psychology, especially those relating to the nature and formation of categories, are called upon to explain these processes. Metaphor and Film ranges widely over film theory as it does over philosophical, literary, linguistic, and psychological accounts of metaphor. Particularly useful to those studying film, literature, and aesthetics, this study is also a provocative contribution to an important debate in which film theorists and philosophers are currently engaged. (shrink)

Normal propositional modal systems This first chapter has two main aims. One is to give a general account of the propositional modal systems that we shall ...

Religious-secular distinctions have been crucial to the way in which modern governments have rationalised their governance and marked out their sovereignty – as crucial as the territorial boundaries that they have drawn around nations. The authors of this volume provide a multi-dimensional picture of how the category of religion has served the ends of modern government. They draw on perspectives from history, anthropology, moral philosophy, theology and religious studies, as well as empirical analysis of India, Japan, Mexico, the United States, (...) Israel-Palestine, France and the United Kingdom. (shrink)

Brian Roper refreshes our understanding of democracy using a Marxist theoretical framework. He traces the history of democracy from ancient Athens to the emergence of liberal representative and socialist participatory democracy in Europe and North America, through to the global spread of democracy during the past century.

R.I.G Hughes offers the first detailed and accessible analysis of the Hilbert-space models used in quantum theory and explains why they are so successful.

This entirely new work guides the reader through the most basic systems of modal propositional logic up to systems of modal predicate with identity, dealing with both technical developments and discussing philosophical applications.

This paper first argues that we can bring out a tension between the following three popular doctrines: (i) the canonical reduction of metaphysical modality to essence, due to Fine, (ii) contingentism, which says that possibly something could have failed to be something, and (iii) the doctrine that metaphysical modality obeys the modal logic S5. After presenting two such arguments (one from the theorems of S4 and another from the theorems of B), I turn to exploring various conclusions we might draw (...) in light of these results, and argue that none comes cost free. In the course of laying out possible responses to my arguments, we'll have a chance to evaluate various doctrines about the interplay between contingency and essence, as well as develop some alternative reductions of metaphysical modality to essence. I don't decisively come down in favor of one response over the others, though I say some things that point towards the conclusion that essence has no role to play in reducing metaphysical modality. (shrink)

The consensus among spacetime substantivalists is to respond to Leibniz's classic shift arguments, and their contemporary incarnation in the form of the hole argument, by pruning the allegedly problematic metaphysical possibilities that generate these arguments. Some substantivalists do so by directly appealing to a modal doctrine akin to anti-haecceitism. Other substantivalists do so by appealing to an underlying hyperintensional doctrine that implies some such modal doctrine. My first aim in this paper is to pose a challenge for all extant forms (...) of this consensus position. My second aim is to show what form substantivalism must take in order to uphold the consensus while addressing this challenge. The result is a novel "plenitudinous" substantivalist view, which predicts that certain modal facts about spacetime are vague or indeterminate. I then argue against this view on independent grounds, concluding that substantivalists should reject the consensus position. The paper also discusses the way forward for substantivalists in light of this conclusion. (shrink)

How can we apply philosophy to our everyday lives? Can philosophy affect the way we live? This book will show how philosophy can help to improve your thinking about everyday life. And how, by improving the quality of your thinking, you can improve the quality of your life. It will make you more aware of what you think and why, and how knowing this can help you can change the way you think about your life. Full of practical examples and (...) straightforward advice, and written by an expertin the field, this guide can help you become calmer and happier, and make better decisions. (shrink)

Formal criteria of theoretical equivalence are mathematical mappings between specific sorts of mathematical objects, notably including those objects used in mathematical physics. Proponents of formal criteria claim that results involving these criteria have implications that extend beyond pure mathematics. For instance, they claim that formal criteria bear on the project of using our best mathematical physics as a guide to what the world is like, and also have deflationary implications for various debates in the metaphysics of physics. In this paper, (...) I investigate whether there is a defensible view according to which formal criteria have significant non-mathematical implications, of these sorts or any other, reaching a chiefly negative verdict. Along the way, I discuss various foundational issues concerning how we use mathematical objects to describe the world when doing physics, and how this practice should inform metaphysics. I diagnose the prominence of formal criteria as stemming from contentious views on these foundational issues, and endeavor to motivate some alternative views in their stead. (shrink)

The hole argument purports to show that all spacetime theories of a certain form are indeterministic, including the General Theory of Relativity. The argument has given rise to an industry of searching for a metaphysics of spacetime that delivers the right modal implications to rescue determinism. In this paper, I first argue that certain prominent extant replies to the hole argument—namely, those that appeal to an essentialist doctrine about spacetime—fail to deliver the requisite modal implications. As part of my argument, (...) I show that threats to determinism of the sort brought out by the hole argument are more general than has heretofore been recognized. I then use these results to propose a novel essentialist doctrine about spacetime that successfully rescues determinism, what I call sufficiency metric essentialism. However, I go on to argue that once we realize what an essentialist doctrine about spacetime must look like in order to address the hole argument, we should reject all such doctrines, because they can't fulfill their ambition of improving on standard modal replies to the argument. I close by suggesting some lessons for future work on spacetime and the metaphysics of physics more broadly, and also drawing some general morals for contemporary metaphysics, in particular about (i) whether essence can be used to articulate a precise structuralist doctrine, and (ii) the relationship between essence and modality. (shrink)

Boredom is an affective experience that can involve pervasive feelings of meaninglessness, emptiness, restlessness, frustration, weariness and indifference, as well as the slowing down of time. An increasing focus of research in many disciplines, interest in boredom has been intensified by the recent Covid-19 pandemic, where social distancing measures have induced both a widespread loss of meaning and a significant disturbance of temporal experience. This article explores the philosophical significance of this aversive experience of ‘pandemic boredom.’ Using Heidegger’s work as (...) a unique vantage point, this article draws on survey data collected by researchers in an ongoing project titled ‘Experiences of Social Distancing During the Covid-19 Pandemic’ to give an original phenomenological interpretation of the meaninglessness and monotony of pandemic boredom. On a Heideggerian interpretation, pandemic boredom involves either a situative confrontation with relative meaninglessness that upholds our absorption in the everyday world, or an existential confrontation with absolute meaninglessness that forces us to take up the question of our existence. Arguing that boredom during the pandemic makes this distinction difficult to sustain, I consider some of the ways in which pandemic boredom might be seen to expose and then exceed the distinctive methodological limitations of Heidegger’s philosophical interpretation of boredom. (shrink)

Darwin hypothesized that some animals, when selecting sexual partners, possess a genuine “sense of beauty” that cannot be accounted for by the logic of natural selection. This hypothesis has been notoriously controversial. In this chapter I propose that the concept of agency can be useful to operationalize the “sense of beauty”, and can help identify the conditions under which one can infer that animals are acting as (aesthetic) agents. Focusing on a case study of the behavior of the Pavo cristatus, (...) I identify the types of evidence that would allow for the inference of agency through aesthetic choice. (shrink)

I consider a number of reasons one might think we should only accept epistemic dilemmas in our normative epistemology as a last resort and argue that none of them is compelling.