The Meaning of Travel

The first ever history of the places where history and philosophy meet, from the Age of Discovery in the sixteenth century to contemplation of how space travel will affect our understanding of who we are in the twenty-first. This book will reshape your understanding of travel.

Emily Thomas, Assistant Professor, Durham University

Emily Thomas is Assistant Professor in Philosophy at Durham University. She completed her PhD at the University of Cambridge and worked in the Netherlands for three years before arriving at Durham. She has published extensively on the philosophy of space and time, as well as philosophical issues in travel. She has also spent a lot of time by herself getting lost around the world.

Travelling well: top 10 vintage trips; 1 What is travel? Montaigne and otherness; 2 What are maps? Brian Harley on cartographic deception; 3 Francis Bacon on exploration and apocalyptic philosophy of science; 4 Innate ideas on Descartes, Locke, and Cannibals; 5 Why did tourism start? A grand tale of education and sex; 6 Travel writing, thought experiments, and Margaret Cavendish's 'Blazing World'; 7 Mountain travel and Henry More's philosophy of space; 8 Edmund Burke and sublime tourism; 9 Wilderness philosophy, Henry Thoreau, and cabin porn; 10 Is 'travel' a male concept?; 11 The ethics of doom tourism; 12 Will space travel show the Earth is insignificant?; Returning home: top 10 vintage trips; Notes; Select Bibliography; Index