The Writing System of the Cryptic Voynich Manuscript Explained: British Researcher May Have Finally Cracked the Code

in Books, History | May 16th, 2019

Human­i­ty will remem­ber the name of James Joyce for gen­er­a­tions to come, not least because, as he once wrote about his best-known nov­el Ulysses, “I’ve put in so many enig­mas and puz­zles that it will keep the pro­fes­sors busy for cen­turies argu­ing over what I meant, and that’s the only way of insur­ing one’s immor­tal­i­ty.” If Joyce was right, then the author of the mys­te­ri­ous Voyn­ich man­u­script (about which you can see an ani­mat­ed intro­duc­tion here) has set a kind of stan­dard for immor­tal­i­ty. Filled with odd, not espe­cial­ly explana­to­ry illus­tra­tions and writ­ten in a script not seen any­where else, the ear­ly 15th-cen­tu­ry text has per­plexed schol­ars for at least 400 or so years of its exis­tence.

But recent years have seen a few claims of hav­ing cracked the Voyn­ich man­u­scrip­t’s code: one effort made use of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, anoth­er con­cludes that the text was writ­ten in pho­net­ic Old Turk­ish, and the lat­est declares the Voyn­ich man­u­script to have been com­posed in “the only known exam­ple of pro­to-Romance lan­guage.” Uni­ver­si­ty of Bris­tol Research Asso­ciate Ger­ard Cheshire, the man behind this new decod­ing, describes that lan­guage as “ances­tral to today’s Romance lan­guages includ­ing Por­tuguese, Span­ish, French, Ital­ian, Roman­ian, Cata­lan and Gali­cian. The lan­guage used was ubiq­ui­tous in the Mediter­ranean dur­ing the Medieval peri­od, but it was sel­dom writ­ten in offi­cial or impor­tant doc­u­ments because Latin was the lan­guage of roy­al­ty, church and gov­ern­ment.”

And what, pray tell, is the Voyn­ich man­u­script actu­al­ly about? Cheshire has revealed lit­tle about its con­tent thus far, though he has described the text as “com­piled by Domini­can nuns as a source of ref­er­ence for Maria of Castile, Queen of Aragon.” Though he has claimed to deter­mine the nature of its unusu­al lan­guage — one with­out punc­tu­a­tion but with “diph­thong, triph­thongs, quad­riph­thongs and even quin­tiph­thongs for the abbre­vi­a­tion of pho­net­ic com­po­nents” — deci­pher­ing its more than 200 pages of con­tent stands as anoth­er task alto­geth­er. In the mean­time, you can read his paper “The Lan­guage and Writ­ing Sys­tem of MS408 (Voyn­ich) Explained,” orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in the jour­nal Romance Stud­ies.

Although Cheshire’s dis­cov­ery has pro­duced head­lines like the Express’ “Voyn­ich Man­u­script SOLVED: World’s Most Mys­te­ri­ous Book Deci­phered After 600 Years,” oth­ers include Ars Techh­ni­ca’s “No, Some­one Has­n’t Cracked the Code of the Mys­te­ri­ous Voyn­ich Man­u­script.” That arti­cle quotes Lisa Fagin Davis, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Medieval Acad­e­my of Amer­i­ca (and vocal Voyn­ich-trans­la­tion skep­tic), crit­i­ciz­ing the foun­da­tion of Cheshire’s claim: “He starts with a the­o­ry about what a par­tic­u­lar series of glyphs might mean, usu­al­ly because of the word’s prox­im­i­ty to an image that he believes he can inter­pret. He then inves­ti­gates any num­ber of medieval Romance-lan­guage dic­tio­nar­ies until he finds a word that seems to suit his the­o­ry. Then he argues that because he has found a Romance-lan­guage word that fits his hypoth­e­sis, his hypoth­e­sis must be right.”

Fagin Davis adds that Cheshire’s “ ‘trans­la­tions’ from what is essen­tial­ly gib­ber­ish, an amal­gam of mul­ti­ple lan­guages, are them­selves aspi­ra­tional rather than being actu­al trans­la­tions,” and that “the fun­da­men­tal under­ly­ing argu­ment — that there is such a thing as one ‘pro­to-Romance lan­guage’ — is com­plete­ly unsub­stan­ti­at­ed and at odds with pale­olin­guis­tics.” Fagin Davis’ crit­i­cism does­n’t even stop there, and if she’s right, Cheshire’s approach will be unlike­ly to pro­duce a coher­ent trans­la­tion of the entire text. And so, at least for the moment, the Voyn­ich man­u­scrip­t’s life as a mys­tery con­tin­ues, keep­ing busy not just pro­fes­sors but enthu­si­asts, tech­nol­o­gists, Research Asso­ciates, and many oth­ers besides.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Has the Voyn­ich Man­u­script Final­ly Been Decod­ed?: Researchers Claim That the Mys­te­ri­ous Text Was Writ­ten in Pho­net­ic Old Turk­ish

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to “the World’s Most Mys­te­ri­ous Book,” the 15th-Cen­tu­ry Voyn­ich Man­u­script

Behold the Mys­te­ri­ous Voyn­ich Man­u­script: The 15th-Cen­tu­ry Text That Lin­guists & Code-Break­ers Can’t Under­stand

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence May Have Cracked the Code of the Voyn­ich Man­u­script: Has Mod­ern Tech­nol­o­gy Final­ly Solved a Medieval Mys­tery?

An Intro­duc­tion to the Codex Seraphini­anus, the Strangest Book Ever Pub­lished

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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A Complete Digitization of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Codex Atlanticus, the Largest Existing Collection of His Drawings & Writings

in Archives, Art, History | May 15th, 2019

No his­tor­i­cal fig­ure bet­ter fits the def­i­n­i­tion of “Renais­sance man” than Leonar­do da Vin­ci, but that term has become so overused as to become mis­lead­ing. We use it to express mild sur­prise that one per­son could use both their left and right hemi­spheres equal­ly well. But in Leonardo’s day, peo­ple did not think of them­selves hav­ing two brains, and the worlds of art and sci­ence were not so far apart as they are now.

That Leonar­do was able to com­bine fine arts and fine engi­neer­ing may not have been over­ly sur­pris­ing to his con­tem­po­raries, though he was an extra­or­di­nar­i­ly bril­liant exam­ple of the phe­nom­e­non. The more we learn about him, the more we see how close­ly relat­ed the two pur­suits were in his mind.

He approached every­thing he did as a tech­ni­cian. The uncan­ny effects he achieved in paint­ing were the result, as in so much Renais­sance art, of math­e­mat­i­cal pre­ci­sion, care­ful study, and first­hand obser­va­tion.

His artis­tic projects were also exper­i­ments. Some of them failed, as most exper­i­ments do, and some he aban­doned, as he did so many sci­en­tif­ic projects. No mat­ter what, he nev­er under­took any­thing, whether mechan­i­cal, anatom­i­cal, or artis­tic, with­out care­ful plan­ning and design, as his copi­ous note­books tes­ti­fy. As more and more of those note­books have become avail­able online, both Renais­sance schol­ars and laypeo­ple alike have learned con­sid­er­ably more about how Leonardo’s mind worked.

First, there was the Codex Arun­del, dig­i­tized by the British Library and made freely avail­able. It is, writes Jonathan Jones at The Guardian, “the liv­ing record of a uni­ver­sal mind”—but also, specif­i­cal­ly, the mind of a “technophile.” Then, the Vic­to­ria and Albert Nation­al Art Library announced the dig­i­ti­za­tion of Codex Forster, which con­tains some of Leonardo’s ear­li­est note­books. Now The Visu­al Agency has released a com­plete dig­i­ti­za­tion of Leonardo’s Codex Atlanti­cus, a huge col­lec­tion of the artist, engi­neer, and inventor’s fine­ly-illus­trat­ed notes.

(Note: If you speak Eng­lish, make sure you click the “EN” but­ton at the bot­tom right hand cor­ner of the site. Also see “How to Read” at the top of the site.)

“No oth­er col­lec­tion counts more orig­i­nal papers writ­ten by Leonar­do,” notes Google. The Codex Atlanti­cus “con­sists of 1119 papers, most of them drawn or writ­ten on both sides.” Its name has “noth­ing to do with the Atlantic Ocean, or with some eso­teric, mys­te­ri­ous con­tent hid­den in its pages.” The 12-vol­ume col­lec­tion acquired its title because the draw­ings and writ­ings were bound with the same sized paper that was used for mak­ing atlases. Gath­ered in the 16th cen­tu­ry by sculp­tor Pom­peo Leoni, the papers descend­ed from Leonardo’s close stu­dent Gio­van Francesco Melzi, who was entrust­ed with them after his teacher’s death.

The his­to­ry of the Codex itself makes for a fas­ci­nat­ing nar­ra­tive, much of which you can learn at Google’s Ten Key Facts slideshow. The note­books span Leonardo’s career, from 1478, when he was “still work­ing in his native Tus­cany, to 1519, when he died in France.” The col­lec­tion was tak­en from Milan by Napoleon and brought to France, where it remained in the Lou­vre until 1815, when the Con­gress of Vien­na ruled that all art­works stolen by the for­mer Emper­or be returned. (The emis­sary tasked with return­ing the Codex could not deci­pher Leonardo’s mir­ror writ­ing and took it for Chi­nese.)

The Codex con­tains not only engi­neer­ing dia­grams, anato­my stud­ies, and artis­tic sketch­es, but also fables writ­ten by Leonar­do, inspired by Flo­ren­tine lit­er­a­ture. And it fea­tures Leonardo’s famed “CV,” a let­ter he wrote to the Duke of Milan describ­ing in nine points his qual­i­fi­ca­tions for the post of mil­i­tary engi­neer. In point four, he writes, “I still have very con­ve­nient bomb­ing meth­ods that are easy to trans­port; they launch stones and sim­i­lar such in a tem­pest full of smoke to fright­en the ene­my, caus­ing great dam­age and con­fu­sion.”

As if in illus­tra­tion, else­where in the Codex, the draw­ing above appears, “one of the most cel­e­brat­ed” of the col­lec­tion.” It was “shown to trav­el­ing for­eign­ers vis­it­ing the Ambrosiana [the Bib­liote­ca Ambrosiana in Milan, where the Codex resides] since the 18th cen­tu­ry, usu­al­ly arous­ing much amaze­ment.” It is still amaz­ing, espe­cial­ly if we con­sid­er the pos­si­bil­i­ty that its artistry might have been some­thing of a byprod­uct for its cre­ator, whose pri­ma­ry moti­va­tion seems to have been solv­ing tech­ni­cal problems—in the most ele­gant ways imag­in­able.

See the com­plete dig­i­ti­za­tion of Leonardo’s Codex Atlanti­cus here. And again, click “EN” for Eng­lish at the bot­tom of the site, and then “How to Read” at the top of the site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Vision­ary Note­books Now Online: Browse 570 Dig­i­tized Pages

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Ear­li­est Note­books Now Dig­i­tized and Made Free Online: Explore His Inge­nious Draw­ings, Dia­grams, Mir­ror Writ­ing & More

How Leonar­do da Vin­ci Drew an Accu­rate Satel­lite Map of an Ital­ian City (1502)

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Hand­writ­ten Resume (1482)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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When Dracula Author Bram Stoker Wrote a Gushing Fan Letter to Walt Whitman (1870)

in Letters, Literature | May 15th, 2019

Every artist starts out as a fan, and in gen­er­al we see the marks of ear­ly fan­dom on their mature work. The best, after all—as fig­ures from Igor Stravin­sky to William Faulkn­er have remarked—steal with­out com­punc­tion, tak­ing what they like from their heroes and mak­ing it their own. But what exact­ly, we might won­der, did Drac­u­la author Bram Stok­er steal from his lit­er­ary hero, Walt Whit­man? I leave it to you to read the 1897 Goth­ic nov­el that spawned innu­mer­able undead fran­chis­es and fan­doms next to Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, the book that most inspired Stok­er when it made its British debut in 1868.

First pub­lished in 1855, then rewrit­ten over the rest of Whitman’s life, the book of poet­ry bold­ly cel­e­brat­ed the same plea­sure and sen­su­al­i­ty that Stoker’s nov­el made so dan­ger­ous. But Drac­u­la was the work of a 50-year old writer. When Stok­er first read Whit­man, he was only 22, wide-eyed and roman­tic, and “grown from a sick­ly boy into a brawny ath­lete,” writes Mered­ith Hind­ley at the Nation­al Endow­ment for the Human­i­ties mag­a­zine.

Whitman—himself a cham­pi­on of robust mas­cu­line health (he once penned a man­u­al called “Man­ly Health & Train­ing”)—so appealed to the young Irish writer’s deep sen­si­bil­i­ties that he wrote the old­er poet a gush­ing let­ter two years lat­er in 1870.

Stoker’s fan let­ter cer­tain­ly shows the Whit­man­ian influ­ence, “a long stream of sen­ti­ment cas­cad­ing through var­i­ous emo­tions,” as Brain Pick­ings’ Maria Popo­va describes it, includ­ing “surg­ing con­fi­dence bor­der­ing on hubris, del­i­cate self-doubt, absolute artist-to-artist ado­ra­tion.” Whit­man, flat­tered and charmed, wrote a reply, but only after four years, dur­ing which Stok­er sat on his let­ter, ashamed to mail it. “For four years, it haunt­ed his desk, part muse and part gob­lin.” When he final­ly gath­ered the courage in 1876 to rewrite the emo­tion­al let­ter and put it in the mail, he was reward­ed with the kind of praise that must have absolute­ly thrilled him.

“You did so well to write to me,” Whit­man replied, “so uncon­ven­tion­al­ly, so fresh, so man­ly, and affec­tion­ate­ly too.” Thus began a lit­er­ary friend­ship that last­ed until Whitman’s death in 1892 and seems to have been as wel­come to Whit­man as to his biggest fan. A stroke had near­ly inca­pac­i­tat­ed the poet in 1873 and sapped his health and strength for the last two decades of his life, leav­ing him, as he wrote, with a physique “entire­ly shatter’d—doubtless permanently—from paral­y­sis and oth­er ail­ments.” But “I am up and dress’d,” he added, “and get out every day a lit­tle, live here quite lone­some, but hearty, and good spir­its.”

One also won­ders if Stok­er would have received such a warm response if he had mailed his orig­i­nal let­ter unchanged. The “pre­vi­ous­ly unsent effu­sion,” notes Popo­va, “opens with an abrupt direct­ness unguard­ed even by a form of address.” Put anoth­er way, it’s blunt, melo­dra­mat­ic, and over­ly famil­iar to the point of rude­ness: “If you are the man I take you to be,” he begins, “you will like to get this let­ter. If you are not I don’t care whether you like it or not and only ask that you put it in to the fire with­out read­ing any far­ther.” Con­trast this with the revised com­mu­ni­ca­tion, which begins with the respect­ful salu­ta­tion, “My dear Mr. Whit­man,” and con­tin­ues in rel­a­tive­ly for­mal, though still high­ly spir­it­ed, vein.

Stok­er had mel­lowed and matured, but he nev­er left behind his ado­ra­tion for Whit­man and Leaves of Grass. When he elo­quent­ly sums up the effect read­ing the book and its orig­i­nal 1855 pref­ace had on him—he echoes the feel­ings of mil­lions of fans through­out the ages who have found a voice that speaks to them from far away of feel­ings they know inti­mate­ly but can­not express at home:

Be assured of this Walt Whitman—that a man of less than half your own age, reared a con­ser­v­a­tive in a con­ser­v­a­tive coun­try, and who has always heard your name cried down by the great mass of peo­ple who men­tion it, here felt his heat leap towards you across the Atlantic and his soul swelling at the words or rather the thoughts.

Read Stoker’s orig­i­nal and revised let­ters and Whitman’s brief, touch­ing response at Brain Pick­ings.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Walt Whitman’s Unearthed Health Man­u­al, “Man­ly Health & Train­ing,” Urges Read­ers to Stand (Don’t Sit!) and Eat Plen­ty of Meat (1858)

Mark Twain Writes a Rap­tur­ous Let­ter to Walt Whit­man on the Poet’s 70th Birth­day (1889)

Hor­ror Leg­end Christo­pher Lee Reads Bram Stoker’s Drac­u­la

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Creative Commons Officially Launches a Search Engine That Indexes 300+ Million Public Domain Images

in Photography | May 15th, 2019

Heads up: Cre­ative Com­mons has offi­cial­ly launched CC Search, a search engine that index­es over 300 mil­lion images from 19 image col­lec­tions, “includ­ing cul­tur­al works from muse­ums (the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, Cleve­land Muse­um of Art), graph­ic designs and art works (Behance, DeviantArt), pho­tos from Flickr, and an ini­tial set of CC0 3D designs from Thin­gi­verse.” All of the indexed images are in the pub­lic domain and released under Cre­ative Com­mons licenses–meaning the images are gen­er­al­ly free to use in a non-com­mer­cial set­ting.

Head here to start search­ing.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pub­lic Domain Day Is Final­ly Here!: Copy­right­ed Works Have Entered the Pub­lic Domain Today for the First Time in 21 Years

An Avalanche of Nov­els, Films and Oth­er Works of Art Will Soon Enter the Pub­lic Domain: Vir­ginia Woolf, Char­lie Chap­lin, William Car­los Williams, Buster Keaton & More

The Library of Con­gress Launch­es the Nation­al Screen­ing Room, Putting Online Hun­dreds of His­toric Films

List of Great Pub­lic Domain Films 

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Paris, New York & Havana Come to Life in Colorized Films Shot Between 1890 and 1931

in Film, History | May 15th, 2019

Cities have long pro­vid­ed a rich envi­ron­ment for pho­tog­ra­phy, at least to pho­tog­ra­phers not inter­est­ed exclu­sive­ly in nature. But only with the advent of the motion pic­ture cam­era did the sub­ject of cities find a pho­to­graph­ic form that tru­ly suit­ed it. Hence the pop­u­lar­i­ty in the 1920s of “city sym­pho­ny” films, each of which sought to cap­ture and present the real life of a dif­fer­ent bustling indus­tri­al metrop­o­lis. But while city sym­phonies cer­tain­ly hold up as works of art, they do make mod­ern-day view­ers won­der: what would all these cap­i­tals look like if I could gaze back­ward in time, look­ing not through the jit­tery, col­or­less medi­um of ear­ly motion-pic­ture film, but with my own eyes?

Youtu­ber Igna­cio López-Fran­cos offers a step clos­er to the answer in the form of these four videos, each of which takes his­tor­i­cal footage of a city, then cor­rects its speed and adds col­or to make it more life­like.

At the top of the post we have “a col­lec­tion of high qual­i­ty remas­tered prints from the dawn of film tak­en in Belle Époque-era Paris, France from 1896–1900.” Shot by the Lumière com­pa­ny (which was found­ed by Auguste and Louis Lumière, inven­tors of the pro­ject­ed motion pic­ture), the sights cap­tured by the film include the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, Tui­leries Gar­den, the then-new Eif­fel Tow­er, and the now-soon-to-be-reha­bil­i­tat­ed but then-intact Notre Dame cathe­dral.

The Paris footage was col­orized using DeOld­ify, “a deep learn­ing-based project for col­oriz­ing and restor­ing old images.” So was the footage just above, which shows New York City in 1911 as shot by the Swedish com­pa­ny Sven­s­ka Biografteatern and released pub­licly by the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art. “Pro­duced only three years before the out­break of World War I, the every­day life of the city record­ed here — street traf­fic, peo­ple going about their busi­ness — has a casu­al, almost pas­toral qual­i­ty that dif­fers from the mod­ernist per­spec­tive of lat­er city-sym­pho­ny films,” say the accom­pa­ny­ing notes. “Take note of the sur­pris­ing and remark­ably time­less expres­sion of bore­dom exhib­it­ed by a young girl filmed as she was chauf­feured along Broad­way in the front seat of a con­vert­ible lim­ou­sine.”

Shot twen­ty years lat­er, these clips of New York’s The­ater Dis­trict have also under­gone the DeOld­ify treat­ment, which gets the bright lights (and numer­ous bal­ly­hoo­ing signs) of the big city a lit­tle clos­er to the stun­ning qual­i­ty they must have had on a new arrival in the 1930s. The streets of Havana were seem­ing­ly qui­eter dur­ing that same decade, at least if the col­orized footage below is to be believed. But then, the his­to­ry of tourism in Cuba remem­bers the 1930s as some­thing of a dull stretch after the high-liv­ing 1920s that came before, dur­ing the Unit­ed States’ days of Pro­hi­bi­tion — let alone the even more daiquiri- and moji­to-soaked 1950s that would come lat­er, speak­ing of eras one dreams of see­ing for one­self.

via Twist­ed Sifter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Immac­u­late­ly Restored Film Lets You Revis­it Life in New York City in 1911

The Old­est Known Footage of Lon­don (1890–1920) Fea­tures the City’s Great Land­marks

Time Trav­el Back to Tokyo After World War II, and See the City in Remark­ably High-Qual­i­ty 1940s Video

Berlin Street Scenes Beau­ti­ful­ly Caught on Film (1900–1914)

Pris­tine Footage Lets You Revis­it Life in Paris in the 1890s: Watch Footage Shot by the Lumière Broth­ers

The Old­est Known Footage of Lon­don (1890–1920) Fea­tures the City’s Great Land­marks

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Free: Play the Original “Minecraft” in Your Browser

in Games | May 14th, 2019

A quick heads up from Engad­get: “Minecraft is cel­e­brat­ing its 10th birth­day by mak­ing its Clas­sic ver­sion eas­i­ly playable on web browsers. You don’t need to down­load any files to make it work, and you don’t have to pay a cent for access. Since Clas­sic was only the sec­ond phase in the game’s devel­op­ment cycle, its fea­tures are pret­ty lim­it­ed. You’ll only have 32 blocks to work with, most of which are dyed wool, and it’s strict­ly cre­ative mode only. But who needs zom­bies, skele­tons and oth­er mobs when you have the ver­sion’s decade-old bugs to con­tend with, any­way?”

Click here to launch in your brows­er. Find more vin­tage video games you can play in your brows­er below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free: Play 2,400 Vin­tage Com­put­er Games in Your Web Brows­er

The Inter­net Arcade Lets You Play 900 Vin­tage Video Games in Your Web Brows­er (Free)

Play­ing a Video Game Could Cut the Risk of Demen­tia by 48%, Sug­gests a New Study

Hayao Miyaza­ki Tells Video Game Mak­ers What He Thinks of Their Char­ac­ters Made with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: “I’m Utter­ly Dis­gust­ed. This Is an Insult to Life Itself”

Learn to Write Through a Video Game Inspired by the Roman­tic Poets: Shel­ley, Byron, Keats

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Learn Philosophy with a Wealth of Free Courses, Podcasts and YouTube Videos

in Philosophy | May 14th, 2019

Used to be, a few thou­sand years ago, if you want­ed to learn phi­los­o­phy, you’d hang out in the ago­ra, the pub­lic space in ancient Greece whose name turned into verbs mean­ing both “to shop” and “to speak in pub­lic.” Pol­i­tics and meta­physics min­gled freely with com­merce. If a Socrates-like sage took a lik­ing to you, you might fol­low him around. If not, you might pay a sophist—a word mean­ing wise teacher before it became a term of abuse that Pla­to lobbed at rivals who charged for their ser­vices. Only cer­tain peo­ple had the means and leisure for these pur­suits. Nonethe­less, phi­los­o­phy was a pub­lic activ­i­ty, not one sequestered in libraries and sem­i­nar rooms.

Even though phi­los­o­phy moved indoors—to monas­ter­ies, col­leges, and the libraries of aristocrats—it did not stay cooped up for long. With the mod­ern age arrived new pub­lic squares, cen­tered around cof­fee­hous­es where all sorts of peo­ple gath­ered, rubbed elbows, formed dis­cus­sion groups. Phi­los­o­phy may not have been the pub­lic spec­ta­cle it seemed to have been in antiq­ui­ty, but neo­clas­si­cal thinkers tried to recre­ate its char­ac­ter of free and open inquiry in pub­lic spaces.

Wide­spread lit­er­a­cy and pub­lish­ing brought phi­los­o­phy to the mass­es in new ways. Philo­soph­i­cal works trick­led down in afford­able edi­tions to the intel­lec­tu­al­ly curi­ous, who might read and dis­cuss them with like-mind­ed laypeo­ple. But phi­los­o­phy also became a pro­fes­sion­al dis­ci­pline, gov­erned by asso­ci­a­tions, con­fer­ences, jour­nals, and arcane vocab­u­lar­ies. Out­side of France, philoso­phers rarely act­ed as pub­lic intel­lec­tu­als address­ing pub­lic issues. They were aca­d­e­mics whose pri­ma­ry audi­ences were oth­er aca­d­e­mics.

The cul­ture suf­fered immense­ly, one might argue, in the with­draw­al of phi­los­o­phy from pub­lic life.

The broad out­line above does not pre­tend to be a his­to­ry of phi­los­o­phy, but rather a sketch of some of the ways West­ern cul­ture has engaged with phi­los­o­phy, treat­ing it as a pub­lic good and resource, or a domain of spe­cial­ists and an activ­i­ty divorced from ordi­nary life. Unfor­tu­nate­ly for us in the 21st cen­tu­ry, dreams of a dig­i­tal ago­ra have col­lapsed in the dystopi­an sur­veil­lance schemes of social media and the tox­ic sludge of com­ments sec­tions. But the inter­net has also, in a way, returned phi­los­o­phy to the pub­lic square.

Philoso­phers can once again share knowl­edge freely and open­ly, and any­one with access can stream and down­load hun­dreds of lessons, cours­es, enter­tain­ing explain­ers, inter­views, pod­casts, and more. We have fea­tured many of these resources over the years in hopes that more peo­ple will dis­cov­er the art of think­ing deeply and crit­i­cal­ly. Today, we gath­er them in a mas­ter list, below.

Learn the in-depth his­to­ry of phi­los­o­phy from Peter Adamson’s acclaimed series The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy… With­out Any Gaps; lis­ten in on round­table dis­cus­sions on famous thinkers and the­o­ries with the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast, or “repave the Ago­ra with the rub­ble of the Ivory Tow­er!” with the acces­si­ble, com­pre­hen­sive phi­los­o­phy videos of Carneades. These are but a few of the many qual­i­ty resources you’ll find below. Tech­nol­o­gy may nev­er recre­ate the ear­ly atmos­phere of pub­lic philosophy—for that you’ll need to get out and min­gle. But it can deliv­er more phi­los­o­phy than any­one has ever had before, lit­er­al­ly right into the palms of our hands.

Cours­es

187 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es: In a neat, handy list, we’ve amassed a col­lec­tion of free phi­los­o­phy cours­es record­ed at great uni­ver­si­ties. Pret­ty much every facet of phi­los­o­phy gets cov­ered here.


YouTube

Wire­less Phi­los­o­phy: Learn about phi­los­o­phy with pro­fes­sors from Yale, Stan­ford, Oxford, MIT, and more. 130+ ani­mat­ed videos intro­duce peo­ple to the prac­tice of phi­los­o­phy. The videos are free, enter­tain­ing, inter­est­ing and acces­si­ble to peo­ple with no back­ground in the sub­ject.

School of Life: This col­lec­tion of 35 ani­mat­ed videos offers an intro­duc­tion to major West­ern philosophers—Wittgenstein, Fou­cault, Camus and more. The videos were made by Alain de Botton’s School of Life.

Gre­go­ry Sadler’s Phi­los­o­phy Videos: After a decade in tra­di­tion­al aca­d­e­m­ic posi­tions, Gre­go­ry Sadler start­ed bring­ing phi­los­o­phy into prac­tice, mak­ing com­plex clas­sic philo­soph­i­cal ideas acces­si­ble for a wide audi­ence of pro­fes­sion­als, stu­dents, and life-long learn­ers. His YouTube chan­nel includes exten­sive lec­ture series on Kierkegaard, Sartre, Hegel and more.

A His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy in 81 Video Lec­tures: Watch 81 video lec­tures trac­ing the his­to­ry of phi­los­o­phy mov­ing from Ancient Greece to mod­ern times. Arthur Holmes pre­sent­ed this influ­en­tial course at Wheaton Col­lege for decades and now it’s online for you.

Carneades: Repave the Ago­ra with the rub­ble of the Ivory Tow­er!  Put your beliefs to the test!  Learn some­thing about phi­los­o­phy!  Doubt some­thing you thought you knew before.  Find on this chan­nel 400 videos on the sub­jects of phi­los­o­phy and skep­ti­cism.

What the The­o­ry?: This col­lec­tion pro­vides short intro­duc­tions to the­o­ries and the­o­ret­i­cal approach­es in cul­tur­al stud­ies and the wider human­i­ties. Cov­ers semi­otics, phe­nom­e­nol­o­gy, post­mod­ernism, marx­ist lit­er­ary crit­i­cism, and much more.

Crash Course Phi­los­o­phy:  In 46 episodes, Hank Green will teach you phi­los­o­phy. This course is based on an intro­duc­to­ry West­ern phi­los­o­phy col­lege lev­el cur­ricu­lum. By the end of the course, you will be able to exam­ine top­ics like the self, ethics, reli­gion, lan­guage, art, death, pol­i­tics, and knowl­edge. And also craft argu­ments, apply deduc­tive and induc­tive rea­son­ing, and iden­ti­fy fal­lac­i­es.

Pod­casts:

Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life: Phi­los­o­phy, philoso­phers and philo­soph­i­cal texts. This pod­cast fea­tures an infor­mal round­table dis­cus­sion, with each episode loose­ly focused on a short read­ing that intro­duces at least one “big” philo­soph­i­cal ques­tion, con­cern, or idea. Recent episodes have focused on Niet­zsche, Sartre and Aldous Hux­ley, and fea­tured Fran­cis Fukuya­ma as a guest.

Hi-Phi-Nation: Cre­at­ed by Bar­ry Lam (Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Phi­los­o­phy at Vas­sar Col­lege), Hi-Phi Nation is a phi­los­o­phy pod­cast “that turns sto­ries into ideas.” Con­sid­er it “the first sound and sto­ry-dri­ven show about phi­los­o­phy, bring­ing togeth­er nar­ra­tive sto­ry­telling, inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism, and sound­track­ing.”

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy … With­out Any Gaps: Cre­at­ed by Peter Adam­son, Pro­fes­sor of Ancient and Medieval Phi­los­o­phy at King’s Col­lege Lon­don, this pod­cast fea­tures more than 300 episodes, each about 20 min­utes long, cov­er­ing the Pre­So­crat­ics (Pythago­ras, Zeno, Par­menides, etc) and then Socrates, Pla­to, Aris­to­tle, and much more.

Phi­los­o­phy Bites: David Edmonds (Uehi­ro Cen­tre, Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty) and Nigel War­bur­ton (free­lance philosopher/writer) inter­view top philoso­phers on a wide range of top­ics. Two books based on the series have been pub­lished by Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press. There are over 400 pod­casts in this col­lec­tion.

In Our Time: Phi­los­o­phy: In Our Time is a live BBC radio dis­cus­sion series explor­ing the his­to­ry of ideas, pre­sent­ed by Melvyn Bragg since Octo­ber 1998. It is one of BBC Radio 4’s most suc­cess­ful dis­cus­sion pro­grammes, acknowl­edged to have “trans­formed the land­scape for seri­ous ideas at peak lis­ten­ing time.’”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Cours­es in Ancient His­to­ry, Lit­er­a­ture & Phi­los­o­phy 

Intro­duc­tion to Indi­an Phi­los­o­phy: A Free Online Course 

Philoso­phers Name the Best Phi­los­o­phy Books: From Sto­icism and Exis­ten­tial­ism, to Meta­physics & Ethics for Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Watch “Critical Living,” a Stop-Motion Film Inspired by the 1960s Movement That Rejected Modern Ideas About Mental Illness

in Animation, Philosophy, Psychology | May 14th, 2019

Along with Michel Fou­cault’s cri­tique of the med­ical mod­el of men­tal ill­ness, the work of Scot­tish psy­chi­a­trist R.D. Laing and oth­er influ­en­tial the­o­rists and crit­ics posed a seri­ous intel­lec­tu­al chal­lenge to the psy­chi­atric estab­lish­ment. Laing’s 1960 The Divid­ed Self: An Exis­ten­tial Study in San­i­ty and Mad­ness the­o­rized schiz­o­phre­nia as a philo­soph­i­cal prob­lem, not a bio­log­i­cal one. Oth­er ear­ly works like Self and Oth­ers and Knots made Laing some­thing of a star in the 1960s and ear­ly 70s, though his star would fade once French the­o­ry began to take over the acad­e­my.

Glas­gow-born Laing is described as part of the so-called “anti-psy­chi­a­try movement”—a loose col­lec­tion of psy­chi­a­trists and char­ac­ters like L. Ron Hub­bard, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guat­tari, Fou­cault, and Erv­ing Goff­man, pio­neer­ing soci­ol­o­gist and author of The Pre­sen­ta­tion of Self in Every­day Life. For his part, Laing did not deny the exis­tence of men­tal ill­ness, nor oppose treat­ment. But he ques­tioned the bio­log­i­cal basis of psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­or­ders and opposed the pre­vail­ing chem­i­cal and elec­troshock cures. He was seen not as an antag­o­nist of psy­chi­a­try but as a “crit­i­cal psy­chi­a­trist,” con­tin­u­ing a tra­di­tion begun by Freud and Jung: “the alienist or ‘head shrinker’ as pub­lic intel­lec­tu­al,” as Duquesne University’s Daniel Burston writes.

Like many oth­er philo­soph­i­cal­ly-mind­ed intel­lec­tu­als in his field, Laing not only offered com­pelling alter­na­tive the­o­ries of men­tal ill­ness but also pio­neered alter­na­tive ther­a­pies. He was inspired by Exis­ten­tial­ism; the many hours he had spent “in padded cells with the men placed in his cus­tody” while appren­ticed in psy­chi­a­try in the British Army; and to a large extent by Fou­cault. (Laing edit­ed the first Eng­lish trans­la­tion of Foucault’s Mad­ness and Civ­i­liza­tion.) Armed with the­o­ry and clin­i­cal expe­ri­ence, he co-found­ed the Philadel­phia Asso­ci­a­tion in 1965, an orga­ni­za­tion “cen­tred on a com­mu­nal approach to well­be­ing,” writes Aeon, “where peo­ple who are expe­ri­enc­ing acute men­tal dis­tress live togeth­er in a Philadel­phia Asso­ci­a­tion house, with rou­tine vis­its from ther­a­pists.”

Based not in the Penn­syl­va­nia city, but in Lon­don, the Philadel­phia Asso­ci­a­tion still operates—along with sev­er­al sim­i­lar orgs influ­enced by Laing’s vision of ther­a­peu­tic com­mu­ni­ties. In “Crit­i­cal Liv­ing,” the ani­mat­ed stop-motion film above, film­mak­er Alex Wid­dow­son excerpts inter­views with “a cur­rent house ther­a­pist, a for­mer house res­i­dent, and the UK author and cul­tur­al his­to­ri­an Mike Jay, to explore the think­ing behind the organization’s method­ol­o­gy and con­tex­tu­al­ize its lega­cy.” For Laing, men­tal ill­ness­es, even extreme psy­choses like schiz­o­phre­nia, are per­son­al strug­gles that can best be worked through in inter­per­son­al set­tings which elim­i­nate dis­tinc­tions between doc­tor and patient and abol­ish meth­ods Laing called “con­fronta­tion­al.”

Laing’s work began to be dis­cred­it­ed in the mid-sev­en­ties, as break­throughs in brain imag­ing pro­vid­ed neu­ro­log­i­cal evi­dence for main­stream psy­chi­atric the­o­ries, and as the cul­ture changed and left his the­o­ries behind. A friend of Tim­o­thy Leary, Ram Dass, and Allen Gins­berg, and an intel­lec­tu­al hero to many in the coun­ter­cul­ture, Laing began to move into stranger ter­ri­to­ry, hold­ing work­shops for “rebirthing” ther­a­pies and giv­ing peo­ple around him rea­son to doubt his own grasp on real­i­ty. Burston lists a num­ber of oth­er rea­sons his exper­i­ments with “ther­a­peu­tic com­mu­ni­ty” large­ly fell into obscu­ri­ty, includ­ing the sig­nif­i­cant invest­ment of time and effort required. “We want a quick fix: some­thing clean and cost-effec­tive, not messy and time con­sum­ing.”

But for many, Laing’s ideas of men­tal ill­ness as an exis­ten­tial problem—one which could be just as much a break­through as a breakdown—continue to res­onate, as do the many polit­i­cal and social cri­tiques he and his con­tem­po­raries raised. “In the sys­tem of psy­chi­a­try,” says one inter­vie­wee in the video above, “there’s a huge empha­sis on goals, and on an end­ing. In the more in-depth ther­a­pies, they’re more sen­si­tive to the fact that the psy­che can’t be rushed, it takes time.”

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy & Neu­ro­science Cours­es

When Michel Fou­cault Tripped on Acid in Death Val­ley and Called It “The Great­est Expe­ri­ence of My Life” (1975)

How to Use Psy­che­del­ic Drugs to Improve Men­tal Health: Michael Pollan’s New Book, How to Change Your Mind, Makes the Case

Sun Ra Plays a Music Ther­a­py Gig at a Men­tal Hos­pi­tal; Inspires Patient to Talk for the First Time in Years

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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