The Cosmic Studyblr

here’s the link everyone

webstaurantstore.com <— link 

I have been interested in self-studying philosophy for a long time, and I am now taking it up as my minor in college. I have compiled this systematic guide to philosophy for my own benefit, however, it may prove beneficial to others as well.

Obviously, I am talking about Western philosophy, and not Eastern philosophy, which is a subject all of its own (and a very interesting one at that).

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is an excellent source of philosophical articles that are both thorough, and accessible. However, I have not been able to find any systematic index of articles from the SEP which make reading through it chronologically possible. Therefore, I have written an outline of important thinkers beginning with the pre-socratics, and I am linking them to respective entries in the SEP.

This guide is a work in progress, and currently has the major disadvantage of not categorizing various philosophers into specific schools of thought. I may try to work these in at a later time, but for now I am focusing on chronology rather than fitting them into categories. The SEP should do that by itself.

The Pre-Socratics

Thales of Miletus

Anaximenes

Heraclitus

Anaximander

Parmenides

Zeno of Elea

Empedocles

Democritus

Pythagoras

Diogenes

Classical Philosophy

(These three thinkers are extremely important, and intimately connected to one another)

Socrates

Plato

Aristotle

Ancient Non-Socratic Schools of Philosophy

Sophism

Protagoras

Gorgias

Skepticism

Pyrrho

Epicureanism

Epicurus

Hedonism

Aristippus of Cyrene

Democritus (although a pre-socratic, he is often associated with this school)

Stoicism

Zeno of Citium (NOT to be confused with Zeno of Elea, a pre-socratic)

Epictetus

Marcus Aurelius (although he came significantly later)

Neoplatonism

Plotinus

St. Augustine (although he came much later, he is a very important and influential figure)

Medieval Philosophy

Scholasticism

St. Anselm

St. Thomas Aquinas

Peter Abelard

Albertus Magnus (Albert the Great)

John Duns Scotus

William of Ockham

Renaissance Philosophers

Roger Bacon (Okay, technically, Bacon was a Franciscan Friar in the 14th century, so he doesn’t belong here. But he definitely doesn’t belong with the Scholastics, so he goes here.)

Erasmus

Machiavelli

Thomas More

Francis Bacon

Islamic Philosophers (no SEP links :( )

Avicenna

Averröes

Jewish Philosopher(s)

Maimonides

Early Modern Philosophy (it isn’t medieval, but it also isn’t modern)

Two competing schools of thought, and those who did not strictly belong to either school.

Rationalism

René Descartes

Baruch Spinoza

Gottfried Leibniz

Nicolas Malebranche

Empiricism

John Locke

Bishop George Berkeley

David Hume

Non-Aligned (Not strictly empiricist or rationalist)

Thomas Hobbes

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Blaise Pascal

Voltaire

Adam Smith

Edmund Burke

Immanuel Kant (signaled the shift from early modern to 19th century philosophy)

19th Century Philosophy

German Idealism

Johann Fichte

Arthur Schopenhauer 

Georg Hegel

Marxism

Karl Marx (of course he gets his own category)

British Empiricism

Jeremy Bentham

John Stuart Mill

American Philosophy

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Henry David Thoreau

C.S Peirce

William James

John Dewey

European Philosophers

Auguste Comte

Søren Kierkegaard

Nietzsche

20th Century Philosophy

Characterized once again by two large and competing traditions.

Analytical Philosophers

Gottlob Frege

Bertrand Russell

Alfred North Whitehead

A.J Ayer

Ludwig Wittgenstein

W.V.O Quine

G.E. Moore

Continental Philosophers

Edmund Husserl

Martin Heidegger

Jean-Paul Sartre

Michel Foucault

This started out as a Google Doc for personal use, but I might as well share it with you since the internet is awesome and chances are there are other lit freaks like me out there! + Masterposts are the best

Beginners (old but gold tbh)

Sparknotes

Cliffnotes

ThugNotes

CrashCourse

Novel Guide

Shmoop

Grade Saver (I’ve found some rare XVIII century plays explained here!)

English 101 (English lit)

English 102 (American lit)

Tips to Analyze, Write, Interpret literature (College level):

English 103: Analyzing and Interpreting Lit.

Literary Analysis Guide - Goshen College

Literary Analysis: Using Elements of Literature

HOW TO WRITE A LITERARY ANALYSIS ESSAY

How to Write an Analysis of Theme — Teaching College English

Analyzing and Interpreting Literature | CLEP

How I Plan and Write Literature Papers by notaperfectstudent​

Very Useful (misc.)

CRITICAL THEORY: Introduction to Literature

Literary Theory Links

Voice of the Shuttle (great humanities research page)

Warwick English Page (bunch of links, exams, essays, etc…)

Consciousness, Literature and the Arts Archive: Articles and Essays

Online Lectures

Terry Eagleton: “The Death of Criticism?” - UC Berkeley Events

Modernism Undone: T.S. Eliot’s Literary Revolution

A Reader’s Guide to T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets” (Lecture by Thomas Howard, Professor Emeritus, Gordon College)

Arts One Open: on The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot (Lecture by Kevin McNeilly for the “Monster in the Mirror” theme)

Introduction to Literary Theory - Yale

Harold Bloom on Shakespeare - Yale

Harold Bloom on Walt Whitman

Noam Chomsky on Linguistics

Keio Linguistic Colloquium SYNTAX SESSION Professor Noam Chomsky (MIT)

Open Courses

ENGL 291: THE AMERICAN NOVEL SINCE 1945 - Yale

ENGL 220: MILTON - Yale

AMST 246: HEMINGWAY, FITZGERALD, FAULKNER - Yale

Fantasy and Science Fiction: The Human Mind, Our Modern World - U- of Michigan (took this, it’s great! Course starts October 2015)

MODERN POETRY - Yale

The Fiction of Relationship - Brown (no open sessions rn but I took this and it is also great, so stay tune for when the course re-opens)

Victorian Era

Literary Genre, Mode, and Style during the Victorian Era (so many sources, essays and papers!! <3)

Nostalgia and the Victorian Novel

Getting On C.19th Lit

Landscape

Tess and Wuthering Heights

Female Relationships

Foreign Spaces

Romanticism

The Romanticism Blog (posts concerning scholars and students, here you will find great ideas for essays!)

The Romantics: Nature (bbc doc)

The Romantics: Eternity (bbc doc)

The Romantics: Liberty (bbc doc)

Lord Byron (bbc doc)

Romantic Circles

Romantic Chronology http://www.english.ucsb.edu:591/rchrono/ The Voice of the Shuttle, Romanticism pages  http://vos.ucsb.edu/  –> literature (in English)–> Romantics–>  a wealth of links to many resources

The XVIII Century

Skin as Surface in Swift and Pope

Public Opinion in Swift and Gay

The Female Body in Swift and Pope

Bawdiness in Cleland and Sterne

Voyeurism in Cleland

Narrative and Progress in Tristram Shandy

Shakespeare

Reading Shakespeare’s Play

Introduction to Shakespeare’s life and works

Featured Essays and Book Excerpts on Shakespeare’s Plays

Shakespeare Mag: Education and resources

Introduction to Shakespeare (so many links!):

Humanist Grammar School

Comedy

Problems with Shakespeare’s Texts

Shakespearean Verse and Prose

Dramatic Plot Structure

Figurative Language and Rhetorical Devices

The Histories

Tragedy

Revenge Tragedy

Establishing the Text of Hamlet

The Romances

Blackfriars Theater and Audience Expectations

Hamlet performed by BATHS (for me this is a great representation tbh!)

Synopses of Shakespeare’s Plays

Shakespeare Resource Center

The Shakespeare Authorship Page

Internet Shakespeare Editions

Robert Teeter’s Shakespeare Links

Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre Virtual Tour

Interactive Globe Theatre

Shakespeare Timeline

The Folger Shakespeare Library

Shakespeare Illustrated (Emory University)

Steven Marx’s “Triangulating Shakespeare”

“But I have that within that passes show”: Hamlet’s Soliloquies as an Expression of Shakespeare’s Loss and Transformation (essay)

Medieval

Medieval English Studies A GUIDE TO MIDDLE ENGLISH

Translatio studii et imperii

Medieval Attitudes toward Vernacular Literature

Courtly Love

Medieval Allegory

The Alliterative Revival

The Three Medieval Estates

Arthurian literature

Arthurian Studies Links & Essays

Arthurian Resources (Thomas Green)

Arthurian Links (Thomas Green)

Labyrinth Arthurian Links

The Camelot Project (Medieval to modern texts and images)

King Arthur links (Medieval History site)

Britannia Arthurian Links

Holy Grail  links (Mary Weidenhaft)

Women of the Arthurian Legend (Camelot Project–modern)

Arthuriana (International Arthurian Society journal)

Arthurnet (Listserve)

A scholarly discussion list for King Arthur

Arthuriana/Camelot Project Bibliographies

Princeton Charrette Project (Manuscript images of Chrétien de Troyes’s Lancelot romance)

Yale MS 229, Prose Lancelot (Illuminated manuscript images)

The Camelot Project Artists Menu (modern)

Poetry

Essay writing tips for poetry

Poetry Foundation: Lectures

Essays on Poetic Theory

British Poetry 1780-1910: a Hypertext Archive of Scholarly Editions

The American Poetry Full-Text Database

English Verse Drama: the Full-Text Database

The English Poetry Full-Text Database

Online Exams

Romantics Exam

Eighteenth Century Literature Final here

Medieval to Renaissance English Literature Examen (Warwick)

Learning astronomy

Podcasts

astronomy cast  : hundreds of podcasts! Great for beginners and general facts, but keep in mind that those are from 2006, so some technical things may no longer be relevant

Videos 

crash course : amazing synthetic videos about astronomy, those are my personal favorites 

Websites

astronomy basics : all you need to know if you’re a great beginner!

Free online courses

probably the most complete one I’ve ever seen

khan academy astronomy courses are quality af

Books

list of books about what to see and how with a telescope

another list of books about astronomy in general 

telescope books

astrophotography

Stargazing

Sky maps

sky maps per month 

very good starwheels aka planispheres 

How to observe

basic skills

10 steps to begin

the perfect all-in-one stargazing guide: I can’t recommend this highly enough!!

Telescopes and things

telescopes

telescope reviews : aka what to chose for what you want to see

everything about telescopes : super useful when you start using one!!

Astrophotography

Starting

everything you need to know depending on what equipment you have!!

all you need version 2!

General

catching the light

hundreds of tips 

Apps and websites

For computers

stellarium

googlesky

astroplanner: plan your observation!

winstars: 3D planet/stargazing!

planetarium 

+ full list of softwares and websites

For mobiles

starwalk2 (android version): alright guys, this one is my absolute favorite at all times. Like, really. Have you ever wished you could point a device at the sky and know exactly what’s above you? And have a description of those things? Even in the middle of the day?? Well, now you can yaaay! :D 

Astronomy News

astronomy.com

universetoday

skyandtelescope

space.com aka my personal favorite

astronomynow

sci-news

++bonus !

All the random facts

here +other links:  x x x x

Backgrounds

hubble site gallery

ESA/Hubble gallery

HD wallpapers

NASA gallery

Even more resources

friendsoftheobservatory

NASA

European Space Agency

ISS Live

I’ve outlined below some of the most useful Excel functions to learn. Some of these functions are very basic but can make a huge difference. These functions save time, automate procedures, and make your life easier! And if you need some help on how to learn them, I’ve listed some helpful resources to get you started. With all of us social distancing at home, now is as good of a time as any to add a skill to your resume. 

Excel Functions to Know:

SUM: returns sum of cells selected

SUMPRODUCT: multiplies ranges or arrays together and returns the sum of product

IF: return one value for a TRUE result and another for a FALSE result

SUMIF: returns the sum of cells if the cell meets a single condition

AVERAGEIF: computes the average of the numbers in a range that meets a certain criteria

VLOOKUP: lookup and retrieve data from a specific column in a table can be exact or approximate match

LEFT: returns a given number of characters from the left side of text string

RIGHT: returns a given number of characters from the right side of text string

CONCATENATE: joins the text of cells together and returns the joined text in one cell

LENGTH: returns the given number of characters in a text

Resources:

Excel Jet: Very useful as a type of Excel dictionary to look up syntax and specific formulas you don’t know

Excel Easy: almost like on online textbook for Excel (great resource for those who have no knowledge of Excel at all!)

Udemy: paid excel course with lots of videos, assignments, and downloadable resources

Coursera: self-paced learning option, quizzes and assignments, and a course certificate

Excel Youtube Course by Technology for Teachers and Students

Datacamp (7/12/20 edit thanks anon for the suggestion!)

Prologue to my Excel series

During the past 3 years at university, I’ve had to read a bunch of articles, a lot of which used some… creative… words, that I, in my ESL-ness, had some trouble making sense of. So here are the best of the worst weird English words I’ve run into in academic articles.

abstruse (adj) - difficult to understand; obscure (you don’t say)

apocrypha (n) - biblical or related writings not forming part of the accepted canon of Scripture; writings or reports not considered genuine

axiomatic (adj) - self-evident (clearly not)

biunivocal (adj) - beneficial to both sides (bi+uni????? why)

cogency (n) - the quality of being clear, logical, and convincing; lucidity

cogitation (n) - the action of thinking deeply about something; contemplation

delphic (adj) - deliberately obscure or ambiguous (again, why would u)

doldrum (n) - a state or period of stagnation or depression

dyadic (adj) - interactions between 2 people, the smallest possible group

effervescence (n) - vivacity; enthusiasm

elegiac (adj) - relating to or characteristic of an elegy (gotta love when the def of a word requires you to look up another word)

endogeneity (n) - a fancy word for a simple problem (WHY)

enfeoff (v) - (under the feudal system) give (someone) freehold property or land in exchange for their pledged service

eschatological (adj) - relating to death, judgement, and the final destiny of the soul and of humankind

explicate (v) - analyse and develop (an idea or principle) in detail

expound (v) - present and explain (a theory or idea) in detail (so just write… ‘explain’………..)

homeomorphic (adj) - apparently a math/physics term. i have only been reading humanities stuff. i hate this

iconoclastic (adj) - criticizing or attacking cherished beliefs or institutions

impingement (n?) - to make an impression; have an effect or impact

intersubjectivity (adj) - shared by more than one conscious mind

mellifluously (adv) - pleasingly smooth and musical to hear

mendacious (adj) - not telling the truth; lying (mm oh my god stop fuckin being mendacious)

moratorium (n) - a temporary prohibition of an activity

occlude (v) -  stop, close up, or obstruct (an opening, orifice, or passage)

octogenarian (n) - a person who is between 80 and 89 years old (so specific)

paucity (adj) - the presence of something in only small or insufficient quantities or amounts

pejorative (adj) - expressing contempt or disapproval

perennial (adj) - enduring or continually recurring

putative (adj) - generally considered or reputed to be (just use SUPPOSED JFC)

ratiocination (n) - the process of exact thinking; a reasoned train of thought

solipsism (n) - the view or theory that the self is all that can be known to exist

uxorilocal (adj) - located at or centered around the residence of the wife’s family or people

quiddity (n) - a distinctive feature; a peculiarity

veridic (adj) - corresponding to facts; not illusory

Here is the second part of the art history masterpost (part 1 here)

Venetian and Northern Renaissance (1430–1550)

general (x) (x) (x) (x) (x) (x) (x)

know your history (x) (x) (x) (x) (x)

artists recommendations

Bellini (x) (x) (x)  

Titian (x) (x) (x) (x)

Dürer (x) (x) (x) (x)

Pieter Bruegel the Elder (x) (x) (x)

Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights (x) (x) (x)

Jan Van Eyck, Arnolfini Portrait (x) (x) (x)

Vermeer (x) (x) (x) (x)

Canaletto  (x) (x) (x)

book recs (x) (x) (x)

video recs (x) (x) (x)

Baroque (1600–1750)

general (x) (x) (x) (x)

know your history (x) (x)

artists recommendations

Rubens (x) (x) (x)

Rembrandt  (x) (x) (x)

Caravaggio  (x) (x)

book recs (x) (x)

video recs (x)

Neoclassical (1750–1850)

general (x) (x) (x)

know your history (x) (x)

artists recs

David (x) (x) (x)

Ingres (x) (x) (x)

Greuze (x) (x) (x)

book recs (x) (x)

video recs (x)

Romanticism (1780–1850)

general (x) (x) (x) (x)

know your history (x) (x)

artists recommendations

Friedrich (x) (x)

Gericaux (x) (x)

Delacroix (x) (x)

Turner (x) (x) (x)

book recs  (x)

video recs (x)

Realism (1848–1900)

general (x) (x) (x)

know your history (x) (x) (x)

artists recs

Corot (x) (x)

Courbet  (x) (x)

Millet (x) (x)

Daumier (x) (x)

book recs (x) (x)

video recs (x)

Impressionism (1865–1885)

general (x) (x) (x)

know your history (x) (x) (x)

artists recs

Monet (x) (x)

Manet (x) (x)

Cassat (x) (x)

Degas (x) (x)

book recs (x) (x)

video recs (x)

Post-Impressionism (1885–1910)

general (x) (x) (x) (x) (x)

know your history (x) (x) (x)

artists recs

Van Gogh (x) (x) (x) (x)

Gauguin (x) (x) (x)

Cézanne (x) (x) (x)

book recs (x) (x)

video recs (x)

Fauvism and Expressionism (1900–1935)

general (x) (x) (x) (x) (x)

know your history (x) (x) (x) (x)

artists recs

Matisse (x) (x) (x)

Kirchner (x) (x)

Kandinsky (x) (x)

book recommendations (x)

video recs (x) (x)

Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism

general (x) (x) (x) (x) (x) (x)

know your history (x) (x) (x) (x)

artists recs

Picasso (x) (x)

Braque (x) (x)

Boccioni (x) (x)

Malevich (x) (x) (x) (x) 

video recs (x)

book recommendations (x)

Dada and Surrealism (1917–1950)

general (x) (x) (x) (x)

know your history (x) (x)

artists recs

Duchamp (x) (x)

Dali (x) (x)

Magritte (x) (x)

Kahlo (x) (x)

book recs (x)

video recs (x) (x)

Pop Art (1960s) and Postmodernism (1970s - now)

general (x) (x)

know your history (x) (x) (x)

artists recs

Warhol (x) (x)

Lichtenstein (x)

Richter (x)

Sherman (x)

Book recs (x) (x)

Video recs (x)

“I want to do further research, what websites do you recommend?”

identifythisart.com // artyfactory.com // ancient.eu // theartstory.org // artcyclopedia.com // wikiart.org // visual-arts-cork.com

“I’d rather follow a proper course than browse through loads of websites, where do I find that?”

khanacademy (this is honestly the best website ever) 

study.com

academicearth

gbaacademy 

“Where can I view or download works of art?”

Download thousands of works of art (now public domain) 

Modern art books online

British Library

Metmuseum collection 

“Which museums frequently release new material to learn from?”

Metmuseum essays : a personal favorite, short but super informative with subjects being either super general or super specific

Guggenheim publications : also a great source

British museum publications : a bit harder to browse through, but it gives great ideas to do your own research! 

That’s it for that long masterpost series, I hope it was helpful! 

Walt Whitman, ‘Song of Myself’, Leaves of Grass