The following article was originally published in the April-May 2013 edition of Red Pepper (Issue 189). Who can share what on the internet? There is an increasing awareness of debates around illegal sharing through high profile court cases and controversies in the news – through things like the Pirate Bay, Wikileaks, or the recent tragic [...]
Author Archives: jwyg
The Genius and the Soil: Open Access and the Politics of Information
Posted in copyright, edwardyoung, herder, history, ideas, intellectualhistory, law, legalhistory, open data, openknowledge, publications
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The Hegemony of the Eye
Insofar as the most innovative instruments of the era – the telescope and the microscope – extended the range and acuity of one sense in particular, scientific experience tended to privilege the visual, with its capacity to produce knowledge at a distance, over the other senses. Even when Bacon castigated normal vision for staying on [...]
Posted in academia, history, ideas, intellectualhistory, philosophy, quotes
Tagged history of science, instruments, John Poinsot, Martin Jay, microscope, perspective, Renaissance, Songs of Experience, telescope, the eye
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Zeno of Citium on Flute-Playing Olives and Harp-Bearing Trees
In his On the Nature of the Gods Cicero alludes to Zeno of Citium‘s discussion of flute-playing olives and harp-bearing trees: “If melodiously piping flutes sprang from the olive, would you doubt that a knowledge of flute-playing resided in the olive? And what if plane trees bore harps which gave forth rhythmical sounds? Clearly you [...]
Posted in academia, history, philosophers, philosophy, quotes
Tagged Marcus Tullius Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, Zeno of Citium
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The Sleepless City
From Alberto Manguel and Gianni Guadalupi’s The Dictionary of Imaginary Places (New York: Macmillan, 1980): SLEEPLESS CITY, in northern Nigeria. The inhabitants have the singular habit of never sleeping, and have therefore no idea of what sleep is. The city is a particularly dangerous place for strangers. If a traveller should happen to overlook the [...]
Diderot on Living Marble and Self-Replicating Harpsichords
Denis Diderot explains how he can make marble come to life ‘whenever he pleases’ in an imaginary dialogue between himself and his friend Jean le Rond d’Alembert, mathematician and co-editor of the Encyclopedia. In the following passage he has just informed d’Alembert, much to the latter’s astonishment, that he knows how to make marble have [...]
Posted in intellectualhistory, philosophy, quotes
Tagged Denis Diderot, Jean le Rond d'Alembert
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Hamann and Benjamin on the Concept of Experience
Next month I’ll be giving a paper at the upcoming The Philosophy of Walter Benjamin conference at Goldsmiths, University of London. Here’s the abstract: In his 1917 essay “On the Program of the Coming Philosophy”, Benjamin wrote: “The great transformation and correction which must be performed upon the concept of experience, oriented so one-sidedly along [...]
Posted in academia, benjamin, hamann, history, intellectualhistory, philosophers, philosophy, talks
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When Leibniz met Spinoza
In 1676 Leibniz found a pretext to visit Spinoza in The Hague, having learned that Spinoza was at work on a philosophical treatise of great importance. Spinoza showed Leibniz the manuscript of the Ethics, and the two men discussed philosophy together over several days. Although there is no written record of their conversation, it seems [...]
Posted in history, intellectualhistory, leibniz, philosophers, philosophy, quotes, spinoza
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Guardian piece on Europeana open data release
I just published a short piece on the Guardian Datablog about a big release of open data from Europeana, Europe’s digital library, which was announced earlier this morning.
Posted in data, humanities, open data, openknowledge
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PHILOS-L mailing list via RSS, Twitter or Facebook
The PHILOS-L mailing list is one of the largest English language email lists for philosophy in Europe. The list was founded in 1989 by Professor Stephen Clark and is hosted at the University of Liverpool. It includes details of jobs, conferences, talks, calls for papers, and new publications in philosophy. In case you’d prefer to [...]
Posted in conferences, digitalhumanities
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Hamann, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein on the Language of Philosophers
I’ve got a chapter on “Hamann, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein on the Language of Philosophers” in Hamann and the Tradition, which has just been published by Northwestern University Press. The book is based on a series of papers given at an international conference on Hamann in New York in March 2009. It is edited by Lisa [...]
Posted in hamann, herder, history, humanities, intellectualhistory, nietzsche, philosophy, wittgenstein
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