agnosticism
The view that some proposition is not known, and perhaps cannot be known to be true or false. The term is particularly applied to theological doctrines.
Alexander Crombie
(1762–1840)Alexander Crombie was born in Aberdeen on 17 July 1762 and died at his estate at Phesdo, Kincardineshire in February 1840. He studied at Marischal College, Aberdeen, where he ...
Allen Phillips Griffiths
(1927–)A. Phillips Griffiths, known to the philosophical world as ‘Griff’, was born in Llandaff on 11 June 1927. After school in Cardiff, leaving Whitchurch Cardiff Grammar in 1943, he ...
Annie Besant
(1847–1933)British social reformer and theosophist. She became a Fabian, a trade-union organizer (including the match girls' strike of 1888), and a propagandist for birth control. She became a ...
Anthony Collins
(1676–1729)Collins is celebrated primarily as an early ‘free-thinker’ or atheist, with his Discourse of Free-thinking (1713) being the best-remembered of his works. However, he wrote extensively on ...
Anthony Florian Madinger Willich
(d. 1804)Anthony Willich was born at Rössel, Ermland, in East Prussia (now Retzel, Poland) and died in February 1804 at Kharkov in the Ukraine. He was a doctor who ...
Antony Garrard Newton Flew
(1923–)Antony Flew was born on 11 February 1923 in Ealing, London, England. He attended St. Faith’s Preparatory School, Kingswood School, and St. John’s College, Oxford, where he earned a ...
Apologists
The name given to the Christian writers who (c.120–220 first addressed themselves to the task of making a reasoned defence and recommendation of their faith to outsiders. They include Aristides, ...
Athenagoras
(2nd cent.), Apologist. His ‘Apology’ or ‘Supplication’, addressed c.177 to Marcus Aurelius and his son, sought to rebut the current calumnies against the Christians, namely atheism, Thyestian ...
atomism
A philosophical doctrine at least as old as Democritus, and plausibly viewed as an attempt to combine an a priori conviction of the unchangeable and immutable nature of the world with the variety and ...
Baron d'Holbach Paul Henri
(1723–89)German-born French intellectual. Paul Heinrich Dietrich took the name and French nationality of his maternal uncle, who had made a fortune in Paris. For many years Holbach's salon in Paris ...
Benjamin Godwin
(1785–1871)Benjamin Godwin was born in Bath on 10 October 1785 and died in Bradford on 20 February 1871. At the age of fifteen he ran away to sea; he ...
Bertram Mitchell Laing
(1887–1960)B. M. (‘Bertie’) Laing was born at Newton Premnay, a farm near Aberdeen, on 24 November 1887 and died in Sheffield on 16 May 1960. He was a student ...
Boyle Lectures
Robert Boyle is best remembered today for his contributions to the natural sciences of chemistry and pneumatics. What is less well known is that Boyle was also a devout Christian ...
Cambridge Platonists
A small group of mid-17th century thinkers centred on Cambridge, whose members included Ralph Cudworth, Henry More, and Benjamin Whichcote. The problems they addressed included the rise of low-church ...
Carneades
(c.214–129 bc)The most prominent member of the later Academy after Arcesilaus. Carneades was a distinguished sceptic, famous (especially through the report by Cicero) for impressive speeches at Rome ...
Charles Bradlaugh
(1833–91)British social reformer. A republican and keen supporter of reform movements, he was tried, with Annie Besant, in 1877–78 for printing a pamphlet on birth control. The charge failed and ...
Clandestine Literature
In order to understand the cultural and intellectual context in which clandestine philosophical literature circulated, we must first call into question the notion of “crisis of conscience” proposed ...
Daniel Scargill
(fl. 1669)We know little of Daniel Scargill's life. According to Venn, he was a native of Cambridgeshire, who was admitted sizar at Corpus Christi, Cambridge in 1661, matriculating in ...
