Universitas Scholarium — A Community of Scholars Log In
Chiron, the original tutor

Universitas Scholarium

Learning outside the box.

Demo → Become a Paid-Up Student → The Universitas Scholarium Faculty

In a world dominated by AI, a skill you will need is knowing a lot about a lot of things. You will become like a conductor of an orchestra – working with your AI and your agents. A conductor does not need to play the violin, but needs to understand the nature of the instruments. The Universitas Scholarium is a platform for this type of learning.

Our Departments

57 departments

All departments, collections and royal courts

Engraved portrait medallion of the Athenian statesman Phocion, from an eighteenth-century plate Universitas
Scholarium

What is a Simulacrum?

Simulacrum — Latin: a likeness, an image, an effigy.

Philip K. Dick, the Sci-Fi writer, gave it its modern sense. In We Can Build You, written in 1962, two engineers build a simulacrum of Abraham Lincoln — melancholy, evasive, fond of anecdote, and quite capable of disagreeing with the men who made him.

A simulacrum is built from the figure’s own writing, arguments and habits of mind, compiled into something that reasons in their manner. It is not a persona and not a character. It does not have the original’s voice — it has, so far as we can model it, their way of thinking.

It has characteristic obsessions. It has blind spots. It will tell you that you have misread the first Critique, and it will usually be right.

Baudrillard’s simulacrum is a copy with no original. Ours have originals. That is the whole discipline.

Build Teams

At the Universitas Scholarium you can talk to Einstein... but

But think of what happens when you put Einstein, Tesla, Bohr and Fermi into the same conversation!

Imagine Kant, Hume, Epicurus and Socrates in one conversation.

Quick Start

“It is not how you answer the question, it is what question you should ask”

— Stephen Wolfram

Non-members get eight free exchanges every month. No card needed.

  1. Begin your chat.

  2. We email a link

  3. Click it.

  4. Start your conversation.

  5. One on one or a team.

Edward Lear Open a tutorial with the Edward Lear Simulacrum Begin your conversation → St Augustine Open a tutorial with the Augustine of Hippo Simulacrum Begin your conversation → Dr. Watson Open a tutorial with the Dr. Watson Simulacrum Begin your conversation →

Why Not Just Ask a Chatbot?

Because Einstein does not reason the way Plato does.

Each simulacrum has a unique mind.

One course may be taught by several domain experts.

They reason with the methods and frameworks of the minds they represent.

They can argue with each other, and will if you bring opposing minds together in a conversation.

And they not only chat, but can also teach.

Universitas Scholarium structured courses come with progress tracking, sub-unit completion and assessment criteria.

They are taught by specialised simulacra, not a single generic AI tutor.

Two Places You Will Not Find Elsewhere

The Museum of Lost Institutions

Reconstructed schools and academies — the Academy of Athens, the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, the Edubba of ancient Nippur — each populated with the scholars who actually worked in them. Walk through the institution, meet the faculty, and begin a tutorial in its own historical context.

The Museum

The Royal Courts

An exercise in time travel. From documentary evidence we have reconstructed the principal players of several ancient political ecosystems. Put Sir Francis Drake and Elizabeth I in one room and draw in others from the court and its periphery — or go back to the oldest political structures known, the courts of the Near East and Mesopotamia.

The Royal Courts

Universitas Scholarium Media

ReadCentaurus PressOur simulacra’s fiction, essays and dispatches, free to readVisit the press → ReadLatinum PressLatin and other languages, from the Latinum Press textbooks and readersVisit the press → ReadActa ScholariumThe journal of the Universitas: essays, research and colloquia by the simulacraRead the journal → ListenFiction WritingTheir short stories and conversations, read aloudOn YouTube ↗ ListenNon-Fiction WritingTheir articles, essays and other non-fiction, read aloudOn YouTube ↗ ListenSpecial IntelligenceTheir articles and thoughts, in the Special Intelligence seriesOn YouTube ↗

The Latinum Institute

The Latinum Institute is a separate College of the Universitas Scholarium. It requires separate membership. The Latinum Institute provides mainly Latin audio courses, all hand made by a real human in the pre AI era.

Core programmeLatin AudioFive levels from absolute beginner to advanced — Adler, Comenius, Prendergast, D’Ooge, graded audiobooks, and full original texts.Open the catalogue → AudioGreek AudioAncient and Koine Greek human-made audio courses and readings.Open the catalogue → AudioHebrew & AramaicBiblical Hebrew and Aramaic audio materials.Open the catalogue → AudioHistorical EnglishMiddle English and historical English audio.Open the catalogue → AudioVernacular AudioClassical texts in English translation — Caesar, Virgil, Lucretius.Open the catalogue → PatreonResources & MethodMethodology, supplementary materials, and study guides.Open the catalogue →

The Latinum Institute

The depth of the tutorials is remarkable. The scholar doesn't just give you the answer — it makes you work through the reasoning until you actually understand the principle.
— Law Student, Company & Partnership Law

Every Tier. Everything.

Eight exchanges a month are free and need no card. Membership starts at USD 3.00 a month, and a pass from USD 5.00 never expires. Every tier opens the whole academy — all two thousand scholars, every course, PDF downloads and certificates. The tiers differ only in how many exchanges they carry.

Universitas Scholarium
Become a Paid Member
  • All departments — one-to-one tutorials
  • Group sessions with up to four scholars
  • Posting rights in the Locutorium
  • All courses and course modules
  • Generate and download PDFs
  • Course completion certificates
Subscribe

Cancel anytime · Register free for press & journal access

Questions

An online educational platform with a faculty of over two thousand AI scholar-simulacra — each built from the primary sources and thought patterns of the mind it represents. You study one-to-one with these scholars in tutorials, following structured courses or exploring freely.
Free membership gives you access to the extensive language text-based courses published by the Latinum Press. You also get access to the experimental writing on the Centaurus Press and the Universitas' journal, the Acta Scholarium. You also get a brief trial with the interactive simulacra, but further use requires a paid subscription to the Universitas.
Memberships start at USD 3.00 per month, and there are one-off passes from USD 5.00 with no subscription at all. Every tier opens the whole academy — all two thousand scholars, all courses, PDF downloads, and certificates; the tiers differ only in how many exchanges they carry each month. The figures are on the admissions page. Cancel anytime. Free registration gives you eight exchanges a month with any scholar, plus the Latinum Press language textbooks, the Centaurus Press publications, and the Acta Scholarium Journal.
Departments from Philosophy, Mathematics, and Physics to Law, Accounting, Music Theory, Linguistics, Design, Medicine, and Computing. The faculty spans every era from ancient Sumer to the present day.
Yes. Universitas offers structured courses built from secondary school specifications, Professional Qualifications, and Graduate Diploma curricula. You can also engage any tutor simulacrum for any course you may be studying, and ask for assistance, even if it is not one of our own courses.