1 00:00:11,190 --> 00:00:16,050 Well, let's go back to the very beginning. The birth of philosophy in ancient Greece. 2 00:00:16,050 --> 00:00:23,820 Why did it happen? Well, who knows? It's very it's a very interesting and important fact about history. 3 00:00:23,820 --> 00:00:31,290 That philosophy, as we understand it, seems only to have both been born once. 4 00:00:31,290 --> 00:00:38,700 For some reason, the ancient Greeks, instead of relying purely on historical and religious myths, 5 00:00:38,700 --> 00:00:49,500 started to ask about how they could understand the world rationally, not relying on tradition, but relying on reason. 6 00:00:49,500 --> 00:00:54,720 They were, in fact, in ancient Greece, many different philosophers, many different schools. 7 00:00:54,720 --> 00:00:59,910 Plato and Aristotle are obviously the most familiar today for a reason that we'll come to. 8 00:00:59,910 --> 00:01:06,120 But there were lots of others, the pre Socratic philosophers, philosophers who preceded Socrates. 9 00:01:06,120 --> 00:01:14,340 Socrates was the great teacher of Plato. Plato founded his academy from where the word academic comes. 10 00:01:14,340 --> 00:01:21,870 The academy actually persisted for 800 years and there were quite a lot of different philosophers through that period. 11 00:01:21,870 --> 00:01:29,280 Aristotle founded his own school, the Lyceum. Again, various philosophers came out of that. 12 00:01:29,280 --> 00:01:36,900 There were various groups of sceptics, notably the Perrone and sceptics named after the philosopher Pyrrho Pierro. 13 00:01:36,900 --> 00:01:44,190 If he said was so sceptical that he saw no reason for believing that falling off cliffs was dangerous. 14 00:01:44,190 --> 00:01:50,310 No reason to believe that collisions with chariots were dangerous. So allegedly, 15 00:01:50,310 --> 00:01:53,790 he had to be followed around everywhere by his friends who will pull it would pull him 16 00:01:53,790 --> 00:01:58,650 out of the way whenever he got near a cliff or whenever a chariot came into view. 17 00:01:58,650 --> 00:02:03,480 He's supposed to have lived to over 90. So I think his friends were quite successful. 18 00:02:03,480 --> 00:02:13,470 Or maybe those stories aren't entirely true. The epicurean philosophers, the stoic philosophers, again, very famous schools of philosophy. 19 00:02:13,470 --> 00:02:18,420 So there was a huge variety of philosophy in ancient Greece. 20 00:02:18,420 --> 00:02:27,540 Now, unfortunately for philosophy, the Roman Empire became Christianised through Constantine originally, of course. 21 00:02:27,540 --> 00:02:38,820 But later, Roman Empire emperors thought it was their moral and religious duty to actually close down the ancient schools of philosophy. 22 00:02:38,820 --> 00:02:47,430 So, for example, a lot of libraries were destroyed and 391 A.D. in particular, the famous Library of Alexandria, 23 00:02:47,430 --> 00:02:54,600 which contained huge numbers of ancient writings from these Greeks and not only for philosophical Greeks, 24 00:02:54,600 --> 00:02:59,580 but also many great literary figures from the ancient world. 25 00:02:59,580 --> 00:03:07,140 A huge number of their works were burned. We know about them only by report. 26 00:03:07,140 --> 00:03:20,280 Sometimes fragments of these are discovered. Now ways are being found of actually recreating some texts, even from burnt fragments in 529 A.D. 27 00:03:20,280 --> 00:03:31,400 All of the non Cristián Scutt schools were closed down. So Plato's Academy, which had been going for all those hundreds of years, was closed. 28 00:03:31,400 --> 00:03:39,530 As a result, we have very few texts from these ancient philosophers, the ancient sceptic's, for example. 29 00:03:39,530 --> 00:03:45,950 Their work is primarily known through only three texts. 30 00:03:45,950 --> 00:03:53,150 One of them is Sextus Empirics outlines of Peronism. Another is Cicero's academical. 31 00:03:53,150 --> 00:03:58,160 And the third is a work by a chap called Diogenes Laertes who wrote Lives of the Great 32 00:03:58,160 --> 00:04:04,040 Philosophers with lots of little snippets describing their interesting lives and deaths. 33 00:04:04,040 --> 00:04:11,600 For example, one of them allegedly jumped into a volcano to prove that he was a God. 34 00:04:11,600 --> 00:04:17,120 I don't think the proof worked. Another one got dropsy. 35 00:04:17,120 --> 00:04:23,370 And in order to cure himself, covered himself with dung and lay down in the marketplace. 36 00:04:23,370 --> 00:04:28,790 And apparently the local dogs, not realising what it was, came along at 18. 37 00:04:28,790 --> 00:04:37,280 So for many of these ancient philosophers, all we know about them is a few snippets in Diogenes Laertes. 38 00:04:37,280 --> 00:04:46,220 And given that kind of story, you can see that we can't view them with tremendous authority. 39 00:04:46,220 --> 00:04:54,890 Plato and Aristotle were somewhat privileged. Plato very early on played a part in the development of Christian doctrine. 40 00:04:54,890 --> 00:05:02,780 If you look at Christian doctrine, such as the incarnation and the Trinity, there are clear signs of platonic thought. 41 00:05:02,780 --> 00:05:06,770 Aristotle became a great authority in the later mediaeval period. 42 00:05:06,770 --> 00:05:11,030 Most famously through Aquinas. You've seen the film. The name of the Rose. 43 00:05:11,030 --> 00:05:21,350 Or read the book, for example. You see the sort of veneration with which Aristotle was held to in the later mediaeval period. 44 00:05:21,350 --> 00:05:30,410 And this synthesis of Christianity and Aristotelian ism became totally dominant in the mediaeval monastic schools. 45 00:05:30,410 --> 00:05:38,360 And so we get scholasticism. So scholasticism was the movement based on Aristotle, but developed beyond Aristotle, 46 00:05:38,360 --> 00:05:47,510 incorporated into Christianity and tortas orthodoxy throughout Christendom. 47 00:05:47,510 --> 00:05:52,790 Well, here is a sketch of Aristotle's universe. 48 00:05:52,790 --> 00:05:58,790 You'll see that in the story that follows. Astronomy plays quite a significant role. 49 00:05:58,790 --> 00:06:03,410 That might seem surprising, but I'm sure you'll understand soon. 50 00:06:03,410 --> 00:06:15,260 The Aristotelian worldview view obviously places the earth right at the centre of the earth is surrounded by water or largely surrounded by water. 51 00:06:15,260 --> 00:06:23,090 Beyond that, we have the sphere of air and fire, then the sphere of the moon, Mercury, Venus, the sun and so on. 52 00:06:23,090 --> 00:06:35,090 The outermost crystalline sphere contains the fixed stars and these rotate around us, which is why we see the stars moving in the sky. 53 00:06:35,090 --> 00:06:42,980 There's a sharp difference between everything below the sphere of the moon and things outside below in the subject. 54 00:06:42,980 --> 00:06:52,130 Solutionary World. We have change, decay, the sorts of things that we are familiar with in the world beyond the moon. 55 00:06:52,130 --> 00:06:57,830 Everything is perfect. Things move in perfect circles. They are unchanging. 56 00:06:57,830 --> 00:07:03,050 That's the heavenly sphere. And we'll see that. 57 00:07:03,050 --> 00:07:11,760 It was really the breaking apart of this picture that played a very major role in the development of modern philosophy. 58 00:07:11,760 --> 00:07:23,750 Okay, so a number of things came about in the years between about fourteen hundred and fifteen hundred and a few decades thereafter, 59 00:07:23,750 --> 00:07:31,580 which completely changed this intellectual landscape. Well, some ancient texts survived. 60 00:07:31,580 --> 00:07:36,230 Now I've mentioned some of those that did like Sextus empirics outlines of Peronism 61 00:07:36,230 --> 00:07:41,750 containing all these sceptical arguments that had been developed in ancient Greece. 62 00:07:41,750 --> 00:07:51,680 Those were lost. But some of these manuscripts remained in the Byzantine world in Constantinople. 63 00:07:51,680 --> 00:07:57,680 Some were translated by the Arabs and preserved in the Arabic world. 64 00:07:57,680 --> 00:08:03,020 Well, eventually the Ottoman Turks attacked Constantinople. 65 00:08:03,020 --> 00:08:13,610 It eventually fell. And at that point and prior to that, a lot of scholars fled to the west, bringing these precious manuscripts with them. 66 00:08:13,610 --> 00:08:25,550 So a lot of these things were rediscovered. I find it extremely interesting that manuscripts that had been hidden away all that time had this dynamite 67 00:08:25,550 --> 00:08:33,560 within them such that rediscovery of them could have such a profound effect on the Western world. 68 00:08:33,560 --> 00:08:40,020 It really does show the value of what had been going on in ancient Greece, 69 00:08:40,020 --> 00:08:47,570 that their philosophical discoveries, discoveries still have this power to unsettle the world. 70 00:08:47,570 --> 00:08:53,240 So you have the development of humanism in Renaissance Italy, a new respect for classical thought. 71 00:08:53,240 --> 00:09:05,210 People were trying to think through things in this new way, which was not totally dominated by the Cristián Aristotelian ism printing invented 14 50. 72 00:09:05,210 --> 00:09:11,180 So these manuscripts suddenly got circulated very quickly amongst scholars in Western Europe. 73 00:09:11,180 --> 00:09:22,900 So Lucretius direct the Reverend Archer and the nature of the universe rediscovered in 14 17 printed 14 86 Sextus empiric, 74 00:09:22,900 --> 00:09:33,740 as I've mentioned, translated into Latin. Fifteen sixty two. Now lots of other things at this time happened to combine. 75 00:09:33,740 --> 00:09:38,750 For example, population was growing. There was a lot of trade, a lot of trade with other countries. 76 00:09:38,750 --> 00:09:47,750 There was the discovery of the new world. So 40 ninety-two, of course, Columbus sails the ocean blue to America. 77 00:09:47,750 --> 00:09:50,450 This brought a lot of economic disruption. 78 00:09:50,450 --> 00:10:00,680 They discovered a lot of silver down in South America, started bringing it back to Europe, cause all sorts of economic complications. 79 00:10:00,680 --> 00:10:05,300 Course, they didn't realise what was causing this, but there was a lot of upheaval, 80 00:10:05,300 --> 00:10:10,940 a lot of change as a result, the realisation that ancient maps were wrong. 81 00:10:10,940 --> 00:10:19,970 Okay. For centuries, people had been going along thinking that Aristotle in the Bible between them contained more or less the whole truth. 82 00:10:19,970 --> 00:10:26,300 And yet suddenly here we are discovering whole new parts of the world that aren't mentioned at all 83 00:10:26,300 --> 00:10:33,950 by Aristotle or the Bible bound to cast some doubt on the ancient authorities cultural relativity. 84 00:10:33,950 --> 00:10:41,120 You start meeting people who have other religious beliefs or other scientific beliefs. 85 00:10:41,120 --> 00:10:46,300 They don't think the way we do. Well, that's bound to make you ask. 86 00:10:46,300 --> 00:10:54,850 If you're at all reflective, how confident can we be that our views are right and there's a wrong technology, 87 00:10:54,850 --> 00:11:00,220 gunpowder, centralisation of power again? Imagine what a difference it makes. 88 00:11:00,220 --> 00:11:11,980 Once gunpowder has been discovered, it is no longer the case that somebody can simply sit walled up in their castle and wait for the enemy to go away. 89 00:11:11,980 --> 00:11:19,260 Fundamental change in the technology of warfare inevitably brings big political differences, 90 00:11:19,260 --> 00:11:24,910 and the very fact that Constantinople had fallen was partly due to this discovery. 91 00:11:24,910 --> 00:11:28,840 So some of these things, you might think, well, how can they have an effect on the history of thought? 92 00:11:28,840 --> 00:11:37,960 Well, the effect is to cause this massively complicated upheaval in all sorts of areas of life. 93 00:11:37,960 --> 00:11:47,260 Suddenly, doubt is cast on all sorts of assumptions that people have taken for granted for generations. 94 00:11:47,260 --> 00:11:52,720 A nice example of this, I think, is the Mappa Mundi. This is the famous map. 95 00:11:52,720 --> 00:12:01,060 It's in Hereford, dates from about 12 '90, and it's based on the writings of Associates, who was a pupil of St. Augustine. 96 00:12:01,060 --> 00:12:06,640 So this was based on a theory going back sort of 800 years. 97 00:12:06,640 --> 00:12:11,740 And the view of the world had basically not changed over that time. That's the whole world. 98 00:12:11,740 --> 00:12:14,980 Jerusalem is the centre of it. 99 00:12:14,980 --> 00:12:22,660 Now, imagine that you have that kind of teaching that's come down for all those many hundreds of years, completely unchanged. 100 00:12:22,660 --> 00:12:32,950 And then suddenly people start bringing back stories of far distant lands, America with lots of tangible evidence of a very different new world. 101 00:12:32,950 --> 00:12:43,620 It's bound to have a profound effect on your worldview. And then, of course, along came the Reformation. 102 00:12:43,620 --> 00:12:47,950 So in 15, 17, Luthor rebelled against the Church of Rome. 103 00:12:47,950 --> 00:12:54,190 Quite a number of things. One of them was his objection to the selling of indulgences. 104 00:12:54,190 --> 00:13:01,960 So if you were a churchman, you could get one of your parishioners who'd done something wrong. 105 00:13:01,960 --> 00:13:09,250 You would persuade them that if they paid lots of money to the church, that it would go better for them in the afterlife. 106 00:13:09,250 --> 00:13:12,190 And this was clearly an abuse. It was very widespread. 107 00:13:12,190 --> 00:13:19,390 It's one of the things Luther protested against many parts of Europe, especially northern Europe. 108 00:13:19,390 --> 00:13:26,710 Quickly became Protestant because Luther wasn't the only influence. People like Calvin and John Knox and so on. 109 00:13:26,710 --> 00:13:38,590 But you ended up getting huge savage wars. The Thirty Years War, which meant was mainly fought over German lands, the civil war in England. 110 00:13:38,590 --> 00:13:49,000 These were extremely vicious, nasty wars going on for a long time, setting family against family and so forth. 111 00:13:49,000 --> 00:13:55,120 In 16, 48, you get a piece eventually, but it's described as a piece of exhaustion. 112 00:13:55,120 --> 00:13:58,870 People are so fed up with all the religious war. 113 00:13:58,870 --> 00:14:05,830 They don't want to go on killing each other. There isn't really a settlement in any theoretical sense. 114 00:14:05,830 --> 00:14:10,930 It's not as though one side wins and the other loses. They just agree to differ. 115 00:14:10,930 --> 00:14:19,930 So in the German lands, you get an agreement that essentially everybody has to obey the religion of their prints. 116 00:14:19,930 --> 00:14:27,930 So if I live in a particular area and my prince happens to go Roman Catholic or Protestant, I have to follow. 117 00:14:27,930 --> 00:14:36,190 And that clearly is just a compromise intended to stop the killing. 118 00:14:36,190 --> 00:14:42,580 Now, imagine in the middle of all this, you read stuff written by these ancient sceptics, 119 00:14:42,580 --> 00:14:52,510 in particular Sextus Empirics, and you naturally get to asking yourself this sort of sceptical question. 120 00:14:52,510 --> 00:14:59,350 The problem of the criterion. Okay. I'm faced with two different people. 121 00:14:59,350 --> 00:15:07,660 One person says the criterion of truth is religious tradition as taught by the church. 122 00:15:07,660 --> 00:15:17,110 The other person says the criterion of truth is the word of God acting on you when you read the Bible. 123 00:15:17,110 --> 00:15:22,060 Okay. How do I know which criterion is right? I've got the Roman Catholic criterion. 124 00:15:22,060 --> 00:15:24,160 I've got the Protestant criterion. 125 00:15:24,160 --> 00:15:32,920 What I'm looking for is some criterion for judging between them, but that is to ask for exactly the thing that I'm looking for. 126 00:15:32,920 --> 00:15:40,810 How can any criterion of reliable knowledge be chosen unless we already have some reliable criterion for making that choice? 127 00:15:40,810 --> 00:15:55,840 So this was a problem highlighted by the ancient sceptics and communicated to modern ages by Sextus Empirics had a big, very profound effect.