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Comment by justin66 | Hacker News Reader

This always struck me as an odd title. Should I be concerned about gaps?

The meaning of this is discussed in the FAQ:

Absolutely, there are (w)hole branches of philosophy that deal with the void, nothingness and what is between things. Nothing is without its absence, is it not?

I heard your words in Peter Adamson's (the host's) voice. Nice.

So, who is talking in your head? You, me or Peter Adamson?

One guest jokes with him that most of history is gaps without any philosophy.

Of course you should? Most history of philosophy classes only cover the superstars and ignore the other 99%.

What have you found amongst the 99% of history of philosophy that isn’t ordinarily taught that was particularly of interest to you?

Learning the pre-Socratics well made Plato and Aristotle make a lot mote sense for example, but medeival times are also filled with people who are either forgotten or misrepresented. Closer to now we have people who had enormuos impact but are rarely talked about let alone credited like maybe Bergson and Mach, for example. Pyrrhonist and other skeptics usually aren't taken very seriously either which I think leads to a lot of arrogance.

Edit: I was talking about temporal gaps in the Western canon here but if we're going to go with spatial/cultural gaps then I have to say Indian (especially Buddhist) and Chinese philosophy have had an enormous impact on me and it's really a crime that people like Nāgārjuna aren't covered in standard courses.

Thanks. I'm not sure how much of that sounds like "gaps" the normal History of Philosophy curriculum would ignore, but I get the point. (certainly, it's a mistake that so much gets spun off into "Asian Philosophy" types of classes, so I agree strongly on that point)

I wouldn't want to claim I really studied all that stuff but the only thing that didn't immediately ring a bell was Mach. I see that he's got a couple of minor mentions in Copleston's history and none in Russell, so a podcast about his work seems like a really good idea.

The title of the podcast sure is a clunker, though.

You should definitely check out Mach if you want to understand Einstein better (but also the previous Newtonian debates in philosophy of physics.)

There were others who Russell missed but I just can't remember off the top of my head right now. In the end, you can't cover everyone in one course but it does seem like some people are completely ignored sometimes. Like maybe Occam will get a line (often misrepresentative) but the majority of time will go to Aquinas, but if you look at the SEP articles on Aristotelian topics (the scholastic debates) for example then you get a different picture of what the context for these things was. It's fine if people don't know, but the problem I have is that people think they know because of how the gaps are kind of paved over if you will. It's nice to tell a story but it would also be good to admit and clarify that the story isn't literally true.

It's been a really long time but I remember History of Philosophy courses at my university being rather specific to a given historical context, down to the whim and expertise of the professor teaching the course that quarter, with the goals of the course listed in the course description. Which is perhaps not engendering in undergrads the global view you'd hope for, but it's maybe a little more realistic and honest. Possibly they weren't all like that (like I said, it's been a long time) but I imagine the global view was meant to be explored during the intro courses - and as I said, probably not including much outside of Western philosophy, which is a problem. But there's really only so much you can cram into a semester.

I'm stretching here but I remember History of Philosophy being a 300 or 400 level course, unlikely to draw any grad students, but a bit further along.

I certainly will check out the podcast, which sounds interesting.

> it's really a crime that people like Nāgārjuna aren't covered in standard courses.

I think I'd find a "standard course" (e.g. 1 term) on Nagarjuna deeply unsatisfying. He's often presented as the inventor of Buddhist logic, but I don't think prajnaparamita makes a lot of sense as a philosophical system. Nagarjuna was a meditator's meditator, and his system of "logic" was supposed to rid the mind of conceptual thought.

Also, one course wouldn't really cut it; people spend lifetimes studying prajnaparamita, and barely scratch the surface.

People spend lifetimes studying Kant. They still need to be mentioned in introductory courses for people to study them further.

There's an entire large campus (with sub schools) of 20th century { logical philosphers | mathematicians } that reject the Axiom of Choice and infinities (simplified) and thus reject many of the modern analytic proofs that "prove the existence of {something}" by first assuming non existence and looking for a contradiction.

The relevance, if any, to a HN audience is this school doesn't settle for "a basis for some space MUST exist" they'll only accept "this is HOW you construct a basis for this space".

ie. in a sense Constructivists are Algorithimists.

Nothing is real unless there's an IKEA assembley diagram for it.

Earlier this year, this podcast had some episodes on Michel de Montaigne who I found to be quite interesting.

So? Philosophy has a lot of redundancy because of semantics and people talking past each other.

Maybe you can argue against the canon and strike down the false gods. If you were to say that philosophy has become tame and mediocre because of namedropping, I wouldn't say you're wrong.

> Philosophy has a lot of redundancy because of semantics and people talking past each other.

So are you saying that you're familiar with all of it and qualified to make this claim or are you just guessing?

Do you really think one person can be familiar with all of it?

If you read enough of it, you'll see that language is a problem for philosophy, hence why there is the principle of charity.

gaps means "the lesser-known figures"

they are referring to a 19th century philosophical concept, perhaps a dis, "the God of the gaps", meaning that as science explained more and more of how the universe worked, religions would "retreat" their explanations of what God's responsibilities were to "the gaps" in scientific understanding. It's not actually a valid challenge to theology.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps#Origins_of_the...

I think you're reading too much into it.

and I think you are not reading enough into it. Name me another philosophical reference to gaps whether in the main or in the breach, especially one with a wikipedia page, something nobody else here has supplied?

They stated their intention in the FAQ. It is common for a person to write a history of philosophy and skip a lot.

https://historyofphilosophy.net/faq

the one thing philosophy should study more of is psych. Freud studied philosophy, and so did they, they have absolutely heard of "God is in the gaps", so their affective declaration where they got the name does not influence my or Freud's opinion about their unconscious motivation. If somebody has heard of something and declares they came up with a similar idea on their own, you have no sus? Want to trade my big penny for your little dime?

Philosophers tend not to be as petty as the scientists and science influencers that you've probably seen, like Richard Dawkins. Over the millennia, many philosophers have been religious; Kant was clearly religious yet his philosophy is still very influential.

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