Great Scientists - Aristotle (video)

Some great person shared this video on bittorrent so I'm now sharing it here on my blog. This is a twenty minute introduction to the great Aristotle produced for the Discovery Channel and presented from a specifically scientific point of view. Indeed his science etched itself so indelibly on the development of western science that it's surprising there are few videos to be found online detailing the legacy of Aristotle. This video is not detailed but compensates by being entertaining in the extreme offering a series of Pythonesque skits attempting to describe the achievements and even the behavioural habits of Aristotle and his contemporaries / predecessors. Screenshots below.

Download the video 'Great Scientists - Aristotle'

The Mark Steel Lectures - Aristotle (online video)

Posted there are YouTube videos of a 2004 BBC FOUR lecture series. Mark Steel offers us a bloody hilarious introduction to Aristotle. Filmed on location in Athens the producers use several devices including Aristotle himself - albeit a 21st century incarnation. In half an hour a general history of ancient and hellenic Greece is delivered, followed by a fairly detailed and enthusiastic biopic of Aristotle and a few related personages. The BBC editors had a field day digging for stock footage to illustrate Steel's incessant gags - from nature programmes and current (or past) affairs - a major theme apparently being political satire, and ridicule of eighties television personalities (? I know, wtf ?...) Thoroughly enjoyable. Laugh while you learn.

R.C. Sproul - Consequences of Ideas (video lectures)

R.C. Sproul is an American theologian and lecturer who has created this long series of talks "The Consequence of Ideas" which appears to have been based on his book of the same title, which is an introduction to philosophy. This is a 'history of western philosophy 101' and is extremely valuable to anyone wanting to gain a basic overview of the dominant thought of last two millennia in a very small time. Indeed the lectures are compressed but still with sufficient detail to give the viewer a familiarity of the subjects and personalities who have been so influential in shaping our views of the phenomenal and metaphysical world. You may watch all the videos in a couple of days however one or two per day would probably assist retention. There's a lot of material here!



Sproul approaches his subject from the position of a theologian but thankfully this does not at all allow his faith to encroach on his presentation. If he did, it would be completely unwatchable certainly for this reviewer as I find the exoteric monotheism inexplicably dull. The thing about religion, particularly from an evangelical perspective is it immediately eradicates to ability to communicate on a fundamental level with, well, the majority of people who do not share the worldview of the religious person. Sproul spares us of his dogma and provides a balanced and comprehensive instruction in what can be a formidable subject.

I was very satisfied with this find. Thanks to the uploader - in the readme file the uploader is a PirateBay user named "DreamingOfHeaven") The torrent (file sharing source) has become inactive for the time being however I have reuploaded it for you here:

Download video series 'R.C. Sproul - Consequences of Ideas'

Technical details: the files are linked from mediafire.com and the video is in .flv format, which is the format for Flash movies. Don't worry if you don't know what that means, you should have no problem with playback in most video players. If you do experience problems, download VLC - VideoLan, it's an open source player which plays everything.