This year’s Voltaire lecture will be presented by the BHA’s president Jim Al-Khalili and will focus on the impacts and changes felt within the Islamic world towards science and philosophy. It shall be a reminder of the breakthroughs achieved by Islamic science over a millennium ago, and how lessons can be learned today from the Golden Age of Islamic Science.

Taking place at Conway Hall in Red Lion Square, Holborn on Monday 14th April 2014, from 7.30pm to 9.00pm, this promises to be a fascinating look at an often forgotten period of Islamic history.

Further details about this event can be found below and further enquiries can be made at info@humanism.org.uk.

*Press release*

Voltaire Lecture - Lessons from the past: science and rationalism in medieval Islam
Presented by Jim Al-Khalili

We often hear these days about the tensions between science and rationalism on the one hand and devout religious beliefs on the other, whether it’s concerns over teaching of evolution in faith schools or the funding of stem cell research, or simply the attitudes of some towards science in general, either when seeing it as a threat or, at best, as no more than a driver of technology and economic power, a view often found in many countries in the developing world.

This lecture will focus on attitudes towards science in the Islamic world and will serve as a reminder of a period a millennium ago, during the Golden Age of Arabic Science, when scholars and thinkers were allowed the freedom to question and study the world around them within a spirit of free, rational enquiry that is often sadly lacking today. What lessons can we learn from the past if we are to move away from muddled thinking, superstition and ignorance?

Time: 7:30 PM through 9:00 PM
Date: Monday April 14th, 2014
Venue: Conway Hall
Red Lion Square
Holborn
London
WC1R 4RL
Tickets: General £15.00
Member/student/unwaged £10.00

Details about this event can be found at- https://humanism.org.uk/events/?page=CiviCRM&q=civicrm/event/info&reset=1&id=48

Or register now at- https://humanism.org.uk/events/?page=CiviCRM&q=civicrm/event/register&id=48&reset=1

About Professor Jim Al-Khalili
Jim Al-Khalili is an Iraqi born theoretical physicist, author and broadcaster. He is a professor at the University of Surrey where he teaches and carries out his research in quantum physics.
Jim currently presents The Life Scientific on Radio 4 on Tuesday mornings, where he interviews prominent scientists about their life and work. He has presented a number of science documentaries on television, particularly on BBC4 where he says he is happiest as he can really get his teeth into a subject.

About the Voltaire Lecture
The Voltaire Lectures Fund was established by the legacy of Theodore Besterman, biographer of Voltaire, for lectures on “any aspect of scientific or philosophical thought or human activity as affected by or with particular reference to humanism.” The British Humanist Association now oversees the fund. Previous Voltaire lecturers have included: Herman Bondi, Barbara Wootton, Bernard Crick, Richard Dawkins, Antony Flew, Michael Foot, Robert Hinde, Ludovic Kennedy, Simon Blackburn, Natalie Haynes, Robin Ince, Kenan Malik, Ray Tallis and Dick Taverne.

Renaissance philosophy is a fascinating yet neglected period in the history of philosophy. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the rise of Humanism and the rediscovery of ancient texts led to new ways of doing philosophy. At the same time the period saw the culmination of the medieval scholastic tradition, with the works of Aristotle and his commentators printed for the first time and an unprecedented number of new commentaries being written. These contrasting tendencies of continuity and change mark the period that bridges the gap between Medieval and Early Modern philosophy. The aim of this workshop is to explore and assess the place of Renaissance philosophy within the Western philosophical tradition. 


Further details at: 
http://renaissance-philosophy.blogspot.co.uk/

Recent research on Plethon has yielded some new interpretations and discovered hitherto unknown manuscripts and contexts (e.g., with the Jewish and Islamic world), while at the same time the relation between Western Europe and Byzantium is now studied as a mutual influence. 

Plethon as a Byzantine thinker was a representative of 14th/15th-century Byzantine thought which manifested three basic types: Greek Christian Orthodoxy, interchange with the western European strains of thought (e.g., translation of scholastic works into Greek, but also evident in the Council of Ferrara- Florence), and a revival ("renaissance") of Greek culture, which has been variously named proto-nationalism in the 19th century, paganism from the Christian standpoint, Hellenism from the parallel to 19th-century Greek nostalgia. It remains to be seen, which of the three characteristics applies best to Plethon. 

There will be a Workshop  on Modal Logic in the Middle Ages, 22-23 November 2012, at Parliament Hall, University of St Andrews. Full details at http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/arche/events/event?id=650

News items relevant to medieval philosophy: conferences, calls for papers, new books published, etc.