Presented by Bridget Brasher Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, MIT   Abstract: Prior to arguing against the existence of void in Physics IV.6–9, Aristotle offers an answer to what void is: place deprived of body. His refutations then target two different sorts of void, separated and inseparable voids. It is unsolved in Aristotelian scholarship what these two sorts of void are. This paper offers an interpretation. I find that the distinction between voids is philosophically rich and bears explanatory potential in a way unrecognized by studies on ancient void theory. Indeed, if my interpretation is correct, the distinction may be prescient, anticipating Newton’s own distinction between relative and absolute inertial frames two millennia later.   Bio: Bridget Brasher is a Postdoctoral Associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy. She completed my PhD at Princeton University in 2023. Her research concerns ancient Greek, Latin, and Indian physics and metaphysics. She is interested in how thinkers in these ancient traditions understood the physical world. Many of her current projects examine their perspectives on space and motion. She is also interested in to what extent these ancient traditions saw metaphysics and ethics as interconnected. […]

Presented by Christopher Foster Independent Scholar, Library of Congress   Abstract: This talk takes unheralded scribes from early China as its tragic protagonists. Aided by the analysis of newly unearthed manuscripts, I argue that the spread of literacy at sub- and non-elite levels came to alter the course of Chinese history, ultimately leading to the canonization of the (now) Confucian classics. The story goes as follows: China’s first enduring empire, the Han dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE), was run initially by hereditary scribal families. Scribes enjoyed a privileged status and earned positions in the Han bureaucracy based on their literacy. This literacy was guarded through government-sanctioned examinations, which tested knowledge of primers called the “scribal volumes.” Yet the scribes were victims of their own bureaucratic success. As the Han empire grew ever larger and more cumbersome, controlling access to these primers wavered. Informal education networks sprouted at the fringes of the Han empire, transmitting the scribal volumes extralegally to unintended audiences, even conscripted peasant soldiers. Competition ensued over mastery of the written word, as a criterion for judging who was best suited to run the empire. A space opened for a new form of classicism during the Han, one championing the “moral […]