The Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you with the support of the Philosophy Department at King's College London and the LMU in Munich, online at History of Philosophy.net.

Today's episode, Nature's Mystery, Science in Renaissance England.

Once that movie about John D. England.

Once that movie about John D has been made and swept the award season, there will be public demand for a sequel.

I suggest that the next movie should not be about Thomas Harriet.

Not that his life was uneventful.

He went to Virginia as a scientific advisor in the retinue of Walter Raleigh,

becoming one of the first Europeans to learn a Native American language, Algonquian,

and also one of the first to get cancer from enjoying tobacco.

He was also arrested after another patron, Henry Percy, the Earl of Northumberland, was falsely suspected of being involved in the gunpowder plot to assassinate King James.

There would be plenty of scientific achievements to present in the movie too. Harriet didn't just learn Algonquin, he devised a phonetic alphabet for a recording it.

He invented a groundbreaking system of mathematical notation,

discovered the sign law of refraction, and made pioneering advances in the study of

falling bodies and specific gravity. Harriet was also among the first to draw maps of

the lunar surface and to see sunspots through a telescope.

He beat Kepler to the realization that planets do not orbit in perfect circles.

He was, in short, something of a one-man scientific revolution. The problem is just that such a movie project would shower on Harriet

the one thing he seemed most determined to avoid, publicity. Having made so many incredible discoveries, the sort of breakthroughs that would shortly be putting the light into Enlightenment and transforming European history forever, he discussed them with a few close associates, wrote them down in manuscripts, put these in a drawer, and left it at that.

His friend, William Lower, chided him for letting others claim credit for discoveries he had

made earlier, including, according to Lower, the non-circular paths of the planets.

This has ensured that his name is not a household one, at least not in my household.

Before I came across him as the author of a report on the colony established at Virginia, I had never heard of him.

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