Progress in Troubled Times: Learning from the ‘Age of Genius’ (the Forum @ LSE Literary Festival 2016)

How should we understand the intellectual changes that marked the turbulent seventeenth century in Europe? Fuelled by both original and orthodox thinking, this period witnessed perhaps the greatest shift in our outlook, from the alchemy and astrology of John Dee to the painstaking observations and astronomy of Galileo. Newton, the man who understood gravity and the laws of motion, remained fascinated to the end of his life by alchemy, embodying the complex attitudes towards belief and superstition of his time. In this talk, A. C. Grayling asks how and why the seventeenth century became the crucible of modernity.

Speaker
A. C. Grayling, Professor of Philosophy and Master of the New College of the Humanities

Chair
Danielle Sands, Lecturer in Comparative Literature and Culture at Royal Holloway and Forum for European Philosophy Fellow