Summary: A century after its inception, analytic philosophy continues to clarify issues through argumentation, analysis, and logical rigor-and to parse out the phenomenon of language. This program scrutinizes the founding of analytic philosophy, the rise of logical positivism, the rejection of metaphysics, and the advent of linguistic philosophy through Russell's Principia Mathematica, Wittgenstein's...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: The impact of continental philosophy has been tremendous, infusing the humanities with a strange brew made up of energy and insight combined with absurdity and meaninglessness. This program delves deeply into concepts and thought processes that fueled the inquiries of the era's major exponents: Hegel's dialectic, Marx's dialectical materialism, Kierkegaard's lone individual standing before God,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: During the 16th century, a new breed of thinker arose, equal parts philosopher and scientist, that threw off the received wisdom of the past and started afresh. In this program, Paul Guyer, of the University of Pennsylvania; Rutgers University's Colin McGinn; and Princeton University's Kwame Anthony Appiah and Daniel Garber address the major philosophical currents of that era-and the explosive...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Who should lead the world's only superpower? When is it acceptable to topple another country's leader? Are personal freedom and national security mutually incompatible? The answers to urgent political questions such as these are informed by 23 centuries of discourse that started with The Republic. This program focuses successively on the pivotal ideas of Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Rousseau,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: Bryan Magee-world-renowned author and professor-and Sir Isaiah Berlin, Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and biographer of Karl Marx, answer fundamental questions such as "What is philosophy?" "Why does it matter?" and "Why should anybody be interested in it today?
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: What is "the good," and why is it that one can never step into the same river twice? This program featuring Princeton University's Alexander Nehamas and Richard Sorabji, honorary fellow at Wolfson College, the University of Oxford, addresses core topics in ancient philosophy such as freedom and fate, permanence and change, happiness, the nature of the cosmos, and the immortality of the soul....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: The mysterious relationship between the mind and the body is avidly being researched by today's cognitive scientists. This program seeks to understand the mind/matter dichotomy through the eyes of some of history's keenest philosophers, including Descartes, Wittgenstein, Leibniz, Mill, Gilbert Ryle, Willard Van Orman Quine, Thomas Nagel, and John Searle. Three of today's leading lights in this...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: The areas in which philosophy and literature overlap are examined in this program by world-renowned author and professor Bryan Magee and Oxford novelist Iris Murdoch. Style and structure in philosophical writing are compared and contrasted with those in literature. The narrative abilities of Plato, Schopenhauer, and Kant are examined. Philosophy's predilection for accepting only literature that...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: In this program, world-renowned author and professor Bryan Magee and Hilary Putnam of Harvard examine current philosophical thought that dismisses the primacy and infallibility of mathematical logic and the scientific method. Modern thinkers, such as Einstein, are credited with introducing interpretive logic into their scientific theories.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program explores three major areas of philosophical inquiry into religion: religious epistemology, or the exploration of the rational grounds for religious beliefs and, in particular, the existence of God; the metaphysics of religion, which inquires into the nature of God; and theodicy, which examines the philosophical implications of the presence of evil in the world. Commentary by Alvin...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: What do modern art, a symphony, and a documentary film have in common? They all require aesthetic considerations. This program presents the ideas of key figures in the shaping and understanding of aesthetics-from Plato, Francis Hutcheson, and Kant to Leon Battista Alberti, Stendhal, and Tolstoy-and addresses pivotal writings, including Aristotle's Poetics and Morris Weitz's "The Role of Theory...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Does science explain the world, or does it simply describe it? Can science ever be truly objective? What is the boundary between science and non-science? Does nature have laws? This program seeks to answer questions such as these through the insights of Princeton University's Daniel Garber; Hilary Putnam, of Harvard University; and Barry Loewer, of Rutgers University. Ranging from the Physics...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: In this video, Chris Beck, an applied design lecturer at Holmesglen TAFE, explains the basic steps in designing and constructing a piece of wood furniture. First, the design process, from drawings to models, is summarized. Next is a demonstration of joint construction, with an emphasis on the importance of safety guidelines and proper tools. Then, assembly and finishing with varnishes or resins...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: This program examines the ideas of the medieval philosophic theologians, particularly St. Thomas Aquinas. World-renowned author and professor Bryan Magee and Oxford medieval philosopher Anthony Kenny discuss Aristotelian logic as the basis of Aquinas' thought, and dispute charges that medieval philosophy merely reinforced extant Christian views. Logical methods employed by Aquinas are discussed...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: As a philosophy teacher with the Prison University Project, Professor Damon Horowitz challenges inmates at San Quentin State to consider Kant's categorical imperative... or to at least rethink their own assumptions about right and wrong. In this TEDTalk, Horowitz tells the story of a philosophical encounter behind bars that soon got personal. Is the subject of ethics purely academic to a...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: In a philosophy-for-children session, a teacher uses a story, picture, news item, or piece of music to stimulate critical thinking and imagination. Children are encouraged to express themselves, to challenge what is being said, and to ask questions that intrigue them. This program explores the concept and supporting methodology of P4C at Gallions Primary School in East London, where such...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: This program explores the process approach to writing instruction, asserting that the act of writing is more than simply the completion of a product; it is a complex, creative, and unpredictable progression of ideas and strategies. With commentary from veteran writing instructors—including Dr. Lois Matz Rosen, author of Within and Beyond the Writing Process in the Secondary English Classroom,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program explores the process approach to writing instruction, asserting that the act of writing is more than simply the completion of a product; it is a complex, creative, and unpredictable progression of ideas and strategies. With commentary from veteran writing instructors—including Dr. Lois Matz Rosen, author of Within and Beyond the Writing Process in the Secondary English Classroom,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: From the immense golden sun of The Weather Project at the Tate Modern to his New York Waterfalls, Olafur Eliasson has created large-scale installations that situate viewers in the ambiguous zones between communal and individual awareness. Filmed over a period of five years, this program follows the Danish-Icelandic artist's work in locations around the world. English-language interviews with...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: James Comer, M.D., M.P.H., has spent decades promoting a focus on child development as a way of improving schools. In this interview, he and Hedrick Smith analyze the Comer Process, a school- and system-wide psychosocial intervention grounded in conflict mitigation, behavior modeling, power-sharing, and all-around involvement of teachers, parents, students, and other stakeholders. "Our program...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Information and communication technology is changing the fashion industry by helping make design, development, and sampling of textiles more efficient. This program takes viewers inside Coppernob, a London-based fashion house, where designers use ICT tools-sketching and visualization software and digital pattern-makers, plotters, and printers-to easily explore different color and style...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: Believing that a philosopher's chief aim should be to challenge prejudices and useless traditions, Jose Ortega y Gasset promulgated a worldview based on "reason with life as its foundation." This program depicts the life and accomplishments of the famous Spanish intellectual, from his early studies in turn-of-the-century Malaga to his spectacular funeral in Madrid in 1955. Featuring interviews...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: Believing that a philosopher's chief aim should be to challenge prejudices and useless traditions, Jose Ortega y Gasset promulgated a worldview based on "reason with life as its foundation." This program depicts the life and accomplishments of the famous Spanish intellectual, from his early studies in turn-of-the-century Malaga to his spectacular funeral in Madrid in 1955. Featuring interviews...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: Eager for knowledge, a child is by nature curious about everything. Why, then, is school such an unpleasant place for some children? In this program, teachers, researchers, a psychoanalyst, a neurologist, a neurobiologist, a psychomotor specialist, and others examine the process of learning and the classroom as a learning center. Mastery of reading and writing-the key to unlocking all forms of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006