The ancient book that invented the modern world

Описание: Lost for over a millennia, this book contains radical ideas that shaped the modern world. How was the book found, and how did the ideas — which threatened the religious sensibilities of the day — survive and kickstart the Renaissance? In this video essay, I explore the book’s origins, its disappearance, and its eventual discovery, and how its radical ideas inspired thinkers like the humanists and the architects of the Enlightenment. All explained with a dash of Monty Python.

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🔥➡️Support this channel by purchasing books used in the making of this video:

The Swerve, by Stephen Greenblatt:
USA Amazon: https://amzn.to/45G32Qz
UK Amazon: https://amzn.to/3VWDYkV

On The Nature Of Things, by Lucretius:
https://amzn.to/3Lnaabj

Cambridge Companion to Lucretius:
https://amzn.to/3RMeAf4

Lucretius on Creation and Evolution: A Commentary on De Rerum Natura, Book Five, Lines 772-1104 (Oxford Classical Monographs):
https://amzn.to/4cBUcp8

Lucretius and the Early Modern, Ed. by David Norbrook:
https://amzn.to/3RM61B9

This video explores the work of Democritus, Epicurus, Lucretius, and how Poggio Bracciolini rediscovered Epicurean thought, helping to fuel humanism in the Renaissance and eventually providing a solid philosophical framework for Montaigne, the heliocentric ideas of Galileo, the atheism of Giordano Bruno, the atomic theory of Isaac Newton, Darwin’s theory of evolution, and even the socialist atheism of Karl Marx.

ABOUT Dr John:
My on-screen debut was in a 1994 Channel 4 documentary about my work in language teaching, and I later acted in a documentary about Victorian England, narrated by Gregory Peck. I was born and raised in the suburbs of London, before going to an all-boys school and then living for a couple of years in Montreal where I learned to speak French. When I returned to the UK I began a career teaching English, which eventually took me to Seville for a few years. I learned Spanish, I painted, took pictures, wrote poetry, learned to be a barber, and did my doctorate in literary studies while living in rural west Wales. I am now based near Bristol.