Chapter 4-The Beginnings Of Modern Science And Philosophy Flashcards
What period of time did the renaissance encompass?
Approximately 1450 to 1600
What is meant by Renaissance humanism, and what four things does it encompass?
The notes and intense interest in human beings, as if we were discovering ourselves for the first time.
Four major themes:
Individualism-concerned with human potential and achievement. The belief in the power of the individual to make a positive difference in the world created a spirit of optimism
Personal religion-although already since humanists were devout Christians, they wanted religion to be more personal and less formal and ritualistic
Intense interest in the past- The works of the early Greek and Roman poets, philosophers, and politicians were of special interest
Anti-Aristotlelianism- many of the humanists believed that the church had embraced Aristotle’s philosophy to too great an extent
A Renaissance humanist who opposed fanaticism, religious ritual, and superstition. He argued in favor of human free will
Desiderius Erasmus
Like the earlier Greek and Roman skeptics, believed there was no objective way of distinguishing among various claims of truth. His doubts concerning human knowledge stimulated a number of subsequent thinkers such as bacon and Descartes
He argued that both Catholic and Protestant theologies were equally indefensible on rational grounds and that the only justifiable basis for a religious conviction was faith
Rejected science as a means of attaining reliable knowledge because scientific truth is in constant flux and denied that simple sensations can act as reasonable guides for living because they are often illusory, and even if they were not, they are influenced by our bodily conditions and personal histories
Michel de Montaigne
In what respect did Montaigne’s philosophy stimulate bacon and Descartes?
His skepticism stimulated a number of attempts to disprove it. Francis Bacon and Renée Descartes responded to Montanes doubts concerning human knowledge by creating philosophical systems they believed were impervious to such doubt
Identify the factors that challenged the authority to the Christian church during the Renaissance
Church dogma consisted of fixed truths: there are exactly 7 heavenly bodies in the solar system, the earth is the center of the universe, and humans are created in gods image, for example. Gradually these truths were challenged and each successful challenge focus suspicion on other truth.
Church scholars attempted to show that contradictions were only a parent and failing in this, they attempted to impose censorship, but it was too late; the challenging spirit was too widespread. The decline in the church’s authority was directly related to the rise of a new spirit of inquiry that took as its ultimate authority empirical observation instead of the Scriptures, faith, or revelation
Reasons for this reawakening of the spirit of objective inquiry:
Aquinas’s acceptance of reason and the examination of nature as ways of knowing God. Once sanctioned by the church, the human capacity to reason was focused everywhere, including on church dogma
The work of the humanists, which we captured the spirit of open inquiry reflected in the classics and to also stress the human potential to act upon the world and change it for the better
The explorations of central Asia and China by Marco Polo
Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of metal movable type which created modern printing techniques
Discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus
Martin Luther’s challenge to Catholicism
Circumnavigation of the globe by Ferdinand Magellan’s expedition
A conception of the solar system that has the earth as it center. During the middle ages, the Ptolemaic system was widely excepted because it agreed with every day experience and was able to predict an account for all astronomical phenomena known at the time and gave humans a central place in the universe, thus agreeing with the biblical account of creation
Ptolemaic system
Sometimes called the Copernicus of antiquity, speculated that the planets, including the earth, rotate around the sun and that the earth rotates on its own axis, and he did so almost 1700 years before Copernicus
Aristarchus of Samos
Argued that the earth rotated around the sun and therefore the earth was not the center of the solar system and the universe as a church had maintained
Nicolaus Copernicus
The theory, proposed by Ptolemy, that the sun and planets rotate around the earth
Geocentric theory
The theory, proposed by Copernicus, that the planets, including the earth, rotate around the sun
Heliocentric theory
Explain why Pythagorean and platonic thinkers tended to be the first to embrace a heliocentric view of the solar system
Working in favor of accepting the Copernican viewpoint was the Pythagorean-platonic view that the universe operated according to mathematical principles and that those principles are always the simplest and most harmonious possible
Showed several of Aristotle’s truths to be false and, by using a telescope, extended the known number of bodies in the solar system to 11. Argued that science could deal only with objective reality and that because human perceptions were subjective, they were outside the realm of science
Galileo Galilee
Explain why Galileo’s attitude toward experimentation was Pythagorean-platonic
Galileo saw his task as explaining the true mathematical reality that existed beyond the world of appearances
Attributes of physical objects: for example, size, shape, number, position, and movement or rest
Primary qualities
Those apparent attributes of physical objects that in fact exist only in the mind of the perceiver-for example, The experiences of color, sound, odor, temperature, and taste. Without a perceiver, these phenomena would not exist
Secondary qualities
Describe Galileo’s views of objective and subjective reality
Galileo made a sharp distinction between objective and subjective reality. Objective reality exists independently of anyone’s perception of it, and its attributes are what later in history were called primary qualities which are absolute, objective, immutable, and capable of precise mathematical description and includes quantity, shape, size, position, and motion or rest.
Besides the primary qualities which constitute physical reality, another type of reality is created by the sensing organism; this reality consists of what came to be called secondary qualities which constitutes objective reality and are purely psychological experiences and have no counterparts in the physical world.
Describe Galileo’s views of the possibility of a science of conscious experience
Because so much of our conscious experience consists of secondary qualities, and because such qualities can never be described and understood mathematically, Galileo believed that consciousness could never be studied by the objective methods of science.
Extended the work of Galileo by showing that the motion of all objects in the universe could be explained by his law of gravitation. Although he believed in God, he believed that God’s will cannot be evoked as an explanation of any physical phenomenon. Viewed universe as a complex machine that God had created, set in motion, and then abandoned
Believe that because God made the universe, studying it objectively was a way of understanding God
According to his law of gravitation, all objects in the universe attract each other. The amount of attraction is directly proportional to the product of the masses of the bodies and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. Able to explain the motion of all physical bodies everywhere in the universe
Isaac Newton
The belief that God’s creation of the universe exhausted or ended his involvement with it
Diesm
Describe the six principles of Newtonian science
- Although God is the creator of the world, he does not actively intervene in the events of the world (deism). It is therefore inappropriate to invoke his will as an explanation of any particular thing or event in the material world
- The material world is governed by natural laws, and there are no exceptions to these laws
- There is no place for a purpose in natural law, and therefore Aristotle’s final causes must be rejected. Natural events can never be explained by postulating properties inherent in then. As a Newtonian scientist, one must not invoke teleological explanations
- Occam’s razor is to be accepted. Explanations must always be as simple as possible
- Natural laws are absolute, but at any given time our understanding is in perfect. Scientists often need to settle for probabilities rather than certainty.
- Classification is not explanation. To understand why anything acts as it does, it is necessary to know the physical attributes of the object being acted on and the nature of the forces acting on it
Urged and inductive, practical science that was free from the misconceptions of the past and from any theoretical influences
Traditionally been listed as the main spokesman for the new science and it’s revolting against past authorities, especially Aristotle. His sharp wit and brilliant writing style half tempted some to speculate that he was that true author of the Shakespearean plays
He was a radical empiricist who believed that nature could be understood only by studying it directly and objectively
Francis Bacon
The method of reasoning by which conclusions must follow from certain assumptions, principles, or concepts. If there are five people in a room, for example, one can deduce that there are also four; or if it is assumed that everything in nature exists for a purpose, then one can conclude that humans, too, exist for a purpose.
This type of reasoning proceeds from the general to the particular
Deduction
The method of reasoning that moves from the particular to the general. After a large number of individual instances are observed, AC Moore principal common to all of them might be formed. Starts with some assumption, and proceeds from the particular to the general
Induction
