Category Archives: intellectualhistory

Happy 10th Birthday Public Domain Review!

By jwyg | Published: January 1, 2021

Today is the 10th birthday of the Public Domain Review, which I co-founded along with its editor Adam Green. As per its mission statement the review is “dedicated to the exploration of curious and compelling works from the history of art, literature, and ideas – focusing on works now fallen into the public domain, the […]

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Piece on “Leibniz, Llull, and the Computational Imagination” in the Public Domain Review

By jwyg | Published: November 12, 2016

The following piece was originally posted on the Public Domain Review on the 10th November 2016. Three hundred years after the death of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and seven hundred years after the birth of Ramon Llull, Jonathan Gray looks at how their early visions of computation and the “combinatorial art” speak to our own age […]

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Talk on “The Politics of Open Data: Past, Present and Future” at Data Power conference, University of Sheffield, 22nd June 2015

By jwyg | Published: June 22, 2015

I’m giving a talk today on “The Politics of Open Data: Past, Present and Future” at the Data Power conference at the University of Sheffield. The slides and abstract for the talk are copied below. The Politics of Open Data: Past, Present and Future from Jonathan Gray

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Paper on “Open Data and the Politics of Transparency” at European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) General Conference 2014, University of Glasgow

By jwyg | Published: September 8, 2014

Last week I gave a paper on “Open Data and the Politics of Transparency” at the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) General Conference 2014 at the University of Glasgow. The original abstract for the talk was as follows: In just a few years, open data has been established as a fundamental cornerstone of official […]

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Goethe and Hegel discuss Hamann at a tea party

By jwyg | Published: September 3, 2013

On October 18, 1827, Goethe gave a tea party in honor of the philosopher Hegel, who had come to Weimar to visit him. Although each of the men genuinely respected the achievements of the other, we know from a first-hand report of the discussion that the radical difference in their basic philosophical positions emerged in […]

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The Genius and the Soil: Open Access and the Politics of Information

By jwyg | Published: May 22, 2013

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 […]

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The Hegemony of the Eye

By jwyg | Published: April 27, 2013

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 […]

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Diderot on Living Marble and Self-Replicating Harpsichords

By jwyg | Published: January 29, 2013

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 […]

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Hamann and Benjamin on the Concept of Experience

By jwyg | Published: November 8, 2012

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 […]

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When Leibniz met Spinoza

By jwyg | Published: September 13, 2012

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 […]

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