SAINT JOHN OF THE CROSS: Born: 1542, Fontiveros, near Ávila, Spain Died: 1591, Úbeda, Spain Major Works: "Ascent of Mount Carmel" (1578-88), "Dark Night of the Soul" (1582-88), "Spiritual Canticle" (1578-88), "Living Flame of Love" (1585) Major Ideas: ~Substantial union with God is that by which the soul exists. ~The union of likeness, also called transforming or mystical union, is that by which the soul becomes like God. ~ God is darkness to the soul in that the divine is essentially other than the human. ~Since the means must be proportionate to the end, the soul must travel in darkness to the Divine Darkness. ~The journey in darkness is named the "via negativa". ~Night is the image for the dark journey of detachment as the soul actively purges herself of desires for that which is specific, concrete and particular and as God purges her of desires and dependencies. ~Detached in terms of her senses and higher faculties, the soul knows only the dark, confused, and general, which is God. ~In the experience of being purged by God, suffering is epistemology. ~Love is both the mode and content of knowing./ Although Saint John of the Cross is one of the most celebrated poets in the Spanish language and revered as well for the depths of his love for God, which the Catholic church acknowledged by canonizing him in 1726, he also deserves mention as a thinker of the first order. Trained in theology at the renowned University of Salamanca, he combined the genius of the disciplined mind with the gifts of the poet to produce a corpus of mystical theology without equal. In his prose writings, he accomplished the extraordinary feat of subjecting mystical experience to intellectual analysis without deadening the spirit that informed all the activities of this gentle man./ The seeds of Saint John´s vocation as a mystical theologian were sown early in life. His family´s poverty might have prevented Juan de Yepes from receiving the education that he deserved were it no for the generosity of a patron who recognized the youth´s exceptional intelligence and spiritual sincerity. After attending the College of the Society of Jesus at Medina del Campo, the young man took the Carmelite habit in 1563 and in the following year entered the University of Salamanca to pursue a three-year course in arts, returning in November of 1567 for a year´s course in theology./ Saint John´s interest in intellectual matters continued throughout his life, as evidenced in the posts he held as rector od the College of the Reform at Alcalá de Henares (1571) and of the Carmelite college in Baeza (1579-82). But the intellectual search for God was not the exclusive concern for Saint John; his greater vocation was to love God intimately and intensely. To further the spiritual vocation of which intellectual understanding was only one aspect , Saint John joined the reform movement that the Carmelite Teresa of Ávila was directing, taking the vow of the Reform in 1568 and giving himself over to the hermetic life for two years before assuming other responsibilities in the Discalced community./ Saint John´s profound love for God overflowed into mystical poetry, which in turn occasioned prose commentaries that he wrote at the behest primarily of nuns who sought spiritual guidance through his poetry. His major works thus are explications of the poems "Dark Night of the Soul," "Spiritual Canticle," and "Living Flame of Love." Saint John´s life was not easy even though he was much loved by the nuns he confessed and by other associates, both religious and secular, who appreciated the beauty of his extraordinary soul. Imprisonment at the hands of the Calced brothers, public humiliation by the Discalced, and an agonizing death, the result of an ill-treated infection that spread throughout his body, brought a full measure of suffering to this saintly man. His suffering is not without significance in considering Saint John of the Cross as a thinker. When he goes beyond the limits of Scholasticism, as he must, in his mystical theology, the categories for understanding that he creates are experiential. Among these categories, suffering is a principal experience./ The Mystical Treatises: The mystical treatises form a progression. The "Ascent of Mount Carmel and Dark Night of the Soul" make a treatise in two parts that presents the principles of the "via negativa", which are crucial to understanding the theology of the "Spiritual Canticle" and "Living Flame of Love". The emphasis in the first treatise is on the process of detachment, or purgation, up to the experience of union known as the spiritual betrothal and marriage. The "Spiritual Canticle" refers briefly to purgation, concentrating on the increasingly subtle consciousness of union, while the "Living Flame of Love", repeating in part the understandings about purgation, also moves into the exceedingly difficult task of suggesting, if not analyzing, the higher reaches of union./ Becuase the point of exposition in the "Ascent of Mount Carmel" and "Dark Night of the Soul" is to elucidate the way of detachment, this treatise is the most speculative of the three nad therefore the most accessible to the reader who, not necessarily engaged in the spiritual journey, is in search of intellectual understanding rather than spiritual guidance. The intellectual categories, however, do not preclude the experiential, as evidenced by the "Dark Night of the Soul." / The first treatise particularly illustrates how Saint John combines Scholastic methodology on the one hand and the experiential -descriptive approach on the other. At a glance, the treatise reveals the Scholastic inclination to break up a text int osmaller and yet smaller segments so as to analyze each one in turn and then reconstitute them into a whole. Thus Saint John provides na introductory exposition of the first stanza of the poem he is explicating, after which he proceeds phrase by phrase in analytical fashin. In addition to the Scholastic procedure, Saint John shows his indebtedness to the Salamancan training by employing categories to explicate the psychology of the soul and by detailing increasingly discrete experiences./ There are two major keys to understanding the mystical theology of the "Ascent of Mount Carmel and Dark Night of the Soul". The first is to read the text in this order: 1. Active purgation of the senses. "Ascent", book 1. 2. Passive purgation of the senses: "Dark Night", book 1. 3. Active purgation of the spirit: "Ascent", books 2 and 3. 4. Passive purgation of the spirit: "Dark Night", book 2. / The second is to begin reading with chapter 5 of book 2 of the "Ascent of Mount Carmel", in which Saint John makes the distinction between substantial union and mystical union, which also is called the "union of likeness" and "transforming union." The reason for the latter terms is that God transforms the soul so that her will is conformed to the will of God and there is effected a likeness of the divine and human in terms of the will. The image of human love -the bride and the bridegroom- elswhere occurs in Saint John´s writings, notably in his poem "Spiritual Canticle," where it expresses the unity of lovers who retain their individuality while in their intimacy they are "oned," that is, they become like one person./ The Journey of Detachment: Although all of Saint John´s commentaries explicate to some degree the journey of detachment, the "Ascent of Mount Carmel" and "Dark Night of the Soul" provide its most detailed map. Tracing the way on the map of the two-part treatise thus provides the rationale for detachment that other treatises assume or merely sketch./ In the active night of the senses, the soul labors to know herself so as to purge the imperfecitons that make her unlike God.. The work is to rid herself of the desires that come in a natural wayh through the five exterior senses and the interior senses of imagination and fancy. Saint John stresses that our desires for things, rather than the things themselves, are the obstacles on the journey. He makes the distinction between privative desires as those that deprive the soul of God and the positive ones that deposit in the soul the effects of wearying, tormenting, darkening, defiling, and weakening her./ Unable to complete the immense task of purging the senses on her own power, the soul may indergo a cleansing by God, thus entering into the passive night of the senses. As the soul is being cleansed of the spiritual imperfections of pride, avarice, luxury, wrath, gluttonny, envy, and sloth, the soul experiences a disturbing absence of God in that the good feelings, or spiritual sweetnesses, that have accompanied her prayer and devotion up to this time dry up./ Saint John gives three signs by which to determine if the aridities originate in God or in the soul´s own lukwarmness. If the soul derives no consolation in religious or worldly affairs; if she fears she is failing God; if she is unable to meditate or employ the imagination in prayer, devotion, or reading; and if these three signs are present together in the soul., they indicate the transition from the active to the passive, from the natural to the supernatural, fro mmeditation to contemplation, which is infused loving. If the soul discerns these signs, she is to rest quietly, for God, rather than she, is taking the inititative in the relationship./ In the active night of the spirit, the soul labors to cleanse the faculties of memory, understanding, and will. With respect to understanding, she is to detach herself from knowledge that is specific and concrete, thus human, in nature; since memory is the repository of knowledge, it too must be cleansed, as must the affections of joy, hope, grief, and fear in the will. / The explanation of the purgation of understanding reveals Saint John´s training in traditional epistemology; he explains the catergories of natural and supernatural understanding on the basis of a porcess whereby we acquire information about exterior reality through the senses, retain the data as images in the imagination, and conceptualize the images. If the elements of exterior reality, senses, images, imagination, understanding, and concepts are present, the mode and content of knowing / understanding are natural, but if one or more of the elements are absent, the mode of understanding is suupernatural, though the content is not necessarily supernatural. In natural corporeal understanding, all elements are present, but in supernatural corporeal understanding, exterior reality is absent. In supernatural imaginary understanding, both exterior reality and the senses are absent, while in supernatural spiritual understanding the imagination and images are also inactive. In super-natural corporeal and imaginary understandings, the mode of understanding is supernatural, but the content is natural because the subject understood is specific, particular, and concrete. At the level of supernatural spiritual understanding, which always is supernatural in mode, there is a difference between the content that is specific and particular and that which is dark, confused, and general. Because spiritual understandings that are specific and particular can by their nature be conceptualized, they ajre not supernatural in content. Only understandings that exceed rational understanding and conceptualization can be classified as supernatural in both mode and content. Because these understandings present themselves to the soul as dark, confused, and general, no word or image can contain them. Dark, confused, and general understanding is understanding of God as God is. By the purgation of the faculty of understanding, the soul comes not to depend on specific, natural knowledge, which would be knowledge about God, but to receive understandings that are God himself./ As Saint John moves into the discussion of the passive might of the spirit, his approach falters in analysis but gains in wisdom. There are no categories into which he can fit the soul´s consciousness of being overwhelmed by that which she does not understand. Saint John´s method here is to identify , describe, and explain the primary experience of the spiritual night -suffering. Much of the "Dark Night of the Soul" is devoted to the suffering that the soul unergoes as the mediators of God are taken away, until the pain itself is the sole indicator of the divine presence. Saint John the mystic knows the impossibility of understanding the mind of God; Saint John the theologian does not give up on the task of explaining the many reasons for the pain that floods the soul´s consciousness./ For Saint John, the mystic and theologian, suffering is epistemological in that the soul knows God by means of her pain. When understandings fail the mind and the soul feels herself suspended over the abyss of inknowing, her comfortable notions of God Shattered, stripped of illusions and supports, and her consciousness is flooded with suffering. Although Saint John explains several reasons for the soul´s pain, from the perspective of knowing, the principal one is that her desire for God causes pain; In her longing to know and love God, she feels abandoned. But if she did not already desire God, she would not suffer. Hence her pain-desire is her mode of knowing. Furthermore, since the pain-desire is to her dark, conffused, and general, it is not only the mode but also the content of knowing./ With the faculty of understanding darkened, the soul moves freely and securely in faith. Her memory similarly purged, she is freed from the specific hopes that were generated by experiences in the past so that she can move in an attitude of hoping. And with the will released from the bonds of particular desires, her desire for God bursts forth in boundless charity. Thus these chapters in the "Dark Night of the Soul" are a model of fidelity on the part of a man who loved God beyond all measure and yet, for the edification of those who sought his counsel, did his best to measure intellectually the source, the way, and the destiny of that love./ Spiritual Love: The darkness that overwhelms the soul as she is cuaght to God in unitive love cedes to images of erotic love and fire in the "Spiritual Canticle" and "Living Flame of Love", respectively. Although the suffering of the dark night is not denied in these commentaries, its reality is given different expression, which reveals hidden recesses of meaning. For example, the imagery of the soul as bride and God as bridegroom provides a contesxt in which to explore the deepening of love from the consciousness of spiritual betrothal to that of spiritual marriage. In marriage, the transformattion of the soul is further transformed so that she is made divine and becomes God by participation. The experience of human lover thus opens up a vista of loving wherein the soul feels herself being moved from transformation to transformation, as it were, reminiscent of the Pauline image of love as going from glory to glory./ Transformation as a process rather than a single act is suggested, moreover, in the exquisite imagery of fire and flames, as Saint John shows the soul being wounded and hollowed out by the living flame of the Holy Spirit. So emptied is the soul of particular desires, understandings, and memories that nothing whatsoever stands between her and God. Subject and object no longer are real for the soul who, once having known God through his creatures, now knows creatures through God. Tu suggest a consciousness without dualities - in which there is no inside or outside - Saint John portrays the higher faculties as being illumined from within rather than lit from without. As all contraries are resolved and dichotomies dismissed, suffering ceases; the soul sees the absolute oneness that was there all along. Thus the soul journeys by love to a loving that bears a unique, wondrous knowing./
FRANCIS BACON:
Born: 1561, at York House in the Strand, London , England .
Died: 1626, Highgate, near London , England .
Major Works: "The Advancement of Learning" (1605), "Novum Organum" (1620), "De Augmentis Scientiarum" (1623)
Major Ideas:
~The purpose of scientific knowledge is to make possible great works for the betterment of the human condition.
~ Experiments are essential to the testing of theories.
~ The human mind is prey to certain typical intellectual failures.
~ In the generation and testing of theories, the negative instance is fundamental.
~ The goal of the science of nature is the discovery of "forms," the unobservable organization or structure of the particles of which all things are composed.
Francis Bacon, the central thinker of the English Renaissance, is often regarded as the father of modern empiricism./ It is no easy matter to recount in brief Bacon´s life. He wrote, with extraordinary learning, about law, politics, history, and morality. More than this, Bacon played a very active role in the somewhat cruel political life of the England of his times. It is nonetheless true that Bacon is best known and justly famous for his effort to lay for the sciences a solid foundation, to clear for the study of nature a place amid what he took to be the desperate confusions of Scholasticism./
In 1573, Bacon went to Trinity College , Cambridge . One might speculate as to what he studied as a youth; we do know that he told his biographer, Rawley, that it was at Cambridge that "he fell into a dislike of the philosophy of Aristotle." Though he was born into promoinent and politically well-connected family -his father was lord keeper under Elizabeth I and his uncle, Burghley, was lord treasurer- when his father died in 1579, Bacon was left only a small inheritance. He took up the study of law with renewed vigon and in 1582 became a barrister. Two years later he entered the House of Comrister. Two years later he entered the House of Commons, where throughout his life he would represent many different constituencies./ Bacon was to make something of a profession of seeking the favor of those in high places. He became a close friend of the Earl of Essex, a favorite of Elizabeth´s . Bacon had hoped for the post of attorney-general, but this went to his archrival in matters of the heart as well as of politics, Coke. To console his friend, Essex gave Bacon an estate./ In 1600, Essex led the disastrous Irish expedition. He was subsequently tried for insubordination. Having fallen out of favor with the Queen, Essex then led an equally disastrous insurrection. Bacon, who had for some time been playingg Essex off the Queen (who seems never to have liked Bacon), played an instrumental role in the prosecution. Essex was convicted as a traitor and executed in 1601. It is, we may speculate, for behavior such asthis that Pope calls Bacon "the wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind." / With the ascension of James I in 1603, Bacon´s political fortunes improved. Between 1603 and 1621 (a period of impressive intellectual output), Bacon was knighted, appointed attorney-general, made lord keeper, lord chancellor, Baron Verulam, and finally created Viscount Saint Albans./ In 1621, his public life was to end suddenly, Bacon, who had had economic troubles since 1598, was charged with bribery. He was convicted after admitting his guilt, heavily fined, and briefly imprisoned in the Tower of London. / Bacon remained intellectually active and productive until his death. The sotry of his death, as reported in Aubrey´s "Brief Lives", is well known. Thomas Hobbes (Bacon´s friend and sometime secretary) and Bacon were riding near Highgate during winter. It occurred to Bacon that snow might preserve flesh. They had a woman gut a chicken, and they proceeded to fill the fowl with ice. Bacon took a chill and died days later./
The Great Instauration:
Bacon writes at the start of his preface to "The Great Instauration" (1620): "That the state of knowledge is not prosperous nor greatly advancing: and that a way must be opened for the human understanding entirely different from any hitherto known, and other helps provided in order that the mind may exercise over the nature of things the authority which properly belongs to it." This at once makes clear Bacon´s great pessimism about the present state of the sciences, as well as his great optimism for theintellectual capacities of man once the mind comes to be properly directed./ The "Instauration", the great plan for the complete reconstruction of the sciences, was to consist of six parts: 1. A Division of the Sciences; 2. The New Organon -Bacon´s proposed method for the carrying on of science; 3. The Phenomena of the universe -the experiential basis, the data of the sciences; 4. The Ladder of the Intellect -examples of the new method in use ; 5. Forerunners of the New Philosophy -tentative and provisional conjectures made before the application of the new method; 6. The New Philosophy -the setting out of the science that was to be established according to Bacon´s account. / This is a grand plan indeed. Though Bacon himself recognized that the sixth part was beyond his powers, the remainder of the "Instauration" was completed by him only to various degrees. The first is to be found in "The Advancement" and in the expanded and Latinized "De Augmentis", the second in the "New Organon". Little progress was made on the other parts. (Though one might look at the "Historia Densi et Rari; "Historia Sulphuris, "Mercurii, et Sallis"; "Historia Vitae et Mortis"; and the "Sylva Sylvarum" for bits and pieces of this work.)
Division of the Sciences:
Bacon´s classification of the sciences is to be found in book 2 of the "Advancement" and in books 2 to 9 of the "De Augmentis". He claims to be classifiying the various branches of learning rather than the sciences (which call "philosophy"), and these he singles out as "poesy," "history," and "philosophy." To these correspond the three faculties of the intellect: imagination, memory, and reason./ The third book of the "De Augmentis" begins with a familiar distinction between revealed knowledge of the divine and natural or sensory knowledge. Natural knowledge is itsellf divided into knowledge of the divine (natural theology) and that concerning nature and man. Common to all these branches of science is "First Philosophy." What Bacon says of this is none too clear, but it does include certain canons of reasoning, for example, the law of noncontradiciton (a statement cannot be both true and false) and the law of excluded middle (a statement must be either true or false). The study of nature is again divided into the speculative and the operative. "We would say the theoretical and the applied.) Here we find a feature much emphasized by Bacon: The purpose of knowledge is to make possible great works. "Human knowledge and human power," he writes, "meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced." / Speculative natural philosophy is divided into "physic" and "metaphysic." Correspondint to these on the applied side are "mechanic" and "magic" (called so because its deep understanding of nature makes possible great wonders.) / Physic and metaphysic are distinguished by Bacon´s making use of the Aristotlean doctrine of the four causes. Within the purview of physic are efficient and material causes, while metaphysic studies final and formal causes. This terminology is not particularly helpful. Of more use is the following: Physic deals with the "common and ordinary course of nature" and metaphysic deals with the "eternal and fundamental laws" of nature. Metaphysic is, then, deeper; its laws serve to explain the manifest variety of nature. Thus Bacon says that physic studies "variable causes." He gives the following example: "Fire is the cause of induration [hardenind], but respective to clay. Fire is the cause of colliquation, but respective to wax." Physic deals with certain correlations that are manifest at the phenomenal level (but which may, nonetheless, require careful observation). Fire causes certain other effects in wax. These are important regularities, but they are not fundamental laws of nature./ Metaphysic is devoted to the study of final causes (ends) and to the study or discovery of formal causes (forms). The inclusion of final causes in metaphysic is rather strange. While Bacon is famed for his view that the search for final causes is responsible for much stagnation and mischief in the study of nature, he concedes that there are final causes and he indicates that it is proper to regard natural phenomena as the intentional product of a superior will. (In any case, the role of final causes would appear to be entirely discontinuous with the method of the study of nature that Bacon proposes.) / The option of formal causes or forms is a fundamental and difficult issue in the interpretation of Bacon. It is clear that the discovery of forms is the chief aim of science. While Bacion is no uncritical atomist, he does regard the furniture of the universe as composed of particles arranged in various ways . And it seems likely that by the form of something is meant the structure or organization of these particles. Thus the form of gold or the form of heat is some manner of organization of minute particles./ A number of issues are significant. First, forms will be unobservable. They are “hidden” and real nature of the furniture of the universe. Second, formal causes are not to be regarded as efficient causes –events determining other events. And the laws –which Bacon sometimes inaptly identifies with the forms- are not to be except in a most indirect fashion, understood as correlating antecedent events and effects. Like much of what is most compelling about contemporary science, Bacon´s forms, his “fundamental laws,” show us what it is for a certain property, for examples, heat and whiteness, to be instantiated in a given particular. This is what Bacon is pointing to when he writes: the “Form of a nature is such that given the form the nature infallibly follows.” Whatever the form of gold is, gold is present if and only if something with that form is present. The study of forms is the study of what it is that is responsible for instantiation, for the fact that something has a given property. / In virtue of his acceptance of the distinction between the mind and the body, Bacon distinguishes the sciences of the body from the sciences of the intellectual realm. However puzzling much of Bacon´s discussion here is, he is clear about the fact the study of humanity will make use of the same methodology as the study of nature. In this way, Bacon is what later generations would call a “methodological monist.” /
Criticism of the Sciences:
Why is it that Bacon regards so darkly the state of learning of his times? He heaps much ridicule upon the Scholastics (he is withering –if not very insightful or original- critic of Aristotle), the Renaissance humanists, and the alchemists./ Bacon´s chief complaints are economically put in the following: “The axioms now in use having been suggested by scanty and manipular experience and a few particulars of most general occurrence are made for the most part just large enough to fit and take these in and therefore it is no wonder if they do not lead to new particulars. And if some opposite instance not observed or not known before chance to come in the way, the axiom is rescued and preserved by some frivolous distinction, whereas the truer course would be to correct the axiom itself.” / Bacon´s criticisms here are more subtle than is often noted. He is, of course, pointing to the precipitousness of much ancient and contemporary theorizing. From few data it launches itself into the construction of general principles. The principles then being regarded as true, deductively valid explanations were constructed and then protected against recalcitrant data in an ad hoc way. This “method” Bacon calls for obvious reasons the “Anticipation of Nature.” / It should be clear, however, that Bacon is also demonstrating that such theories are extremely limited and unfruitful in the sense that they apply to a narrow range of particulars and have no observational consequences outside their original preserve. Such theories will not allow us to make new discoveries or to make predictions in surprising places. But a theory that, for example, explains both the behavior of celestial bodies and the behavior of tides is a better theory than one limited to celestial bodies./
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Furthermore, one is unlikely to get theories of such explanatory power and elegance by making uncritical use of the categories of common sense. Bacon notes that "the discoveries that have hiterto been made in the sciences are such as to lie close to vulgar notions"; they barely go beneath the surface. It is for this reason that Bacon is rightly critical of the careless way in which previous thinkers had divided the natural world into species, genera, etc. Rather we must aim to carve nature at her joints, he urged; we must aim to discover the causally and thus explanatorily relevant properties of nature./
The Idols:
How can it be that the sciences have reached such a point? Bacon must obviously have thought that the human cognitive apparatus is up to the task of discovering the truth about the natural world. Yet we can well wonder about the source of his optimism given his unflattering picture of past investigation. Bacon´s view about human cognitive abilities can be likened to Seneca´s in the moral sphere: "At our birth nature made us teachable and gave us reason, not perfect but capable of being perfected." Still, the human mind can be corrupted. And according to Bacon, unless one takes great care, it typically will become corrupted./ Bacon´s Idols -introduced in book 1 of the "Novum Organum"- are certain typical ways in which the human mind is prey to systematic and pernicious intellectual failures. Bacon speaks of four classes of Idols./ The "Idols of the Tribe" are so called because they have "their foundation in human nature itself." Among these are the tendency to be struck by and to give priority to data that are salient or easily recalled; the tendency to cleave to what we already believe even in the teeth of the evidence; the tendency to pay great attention to evidence that confirms our view, but to ignore and fail to notice data that disconfirm our opinions. Most important among the Idols of the Tribe are the limitations and failures of the senses./ The "Idols of the Cave" are deficiencies that arise due to an individual´s habits, education, and other developmental accidents. Some of us may be very good at logic and some very poor; some good at distinguishing between things that are apparently similar, some very poor./ The "Idols of the Market-Place" are deficiencies that have their basis in language. First, since we can give names to what does not exist (for example, Aristotle´s primum mobile) ; words can lead us radically astray. Second, a single word (for example, "humid") can be applied to a variety of different properties in different substances. This kind of abstraction can seduce us into making claims that have no basis in nature./ Last are the "Idols of the Theatre," which are patterns of thought that are the result of allegiance to false schools of thinking. For example, an Aristotlean might be unable to give due consideration to Bacon´s ow notion of "form." / The doctrine of the Idols anticipates much that is to be found in contemporary theory of methodology and social psychology. What Bacon is urging here is that we have good reason to be suspicious of our own beliefs, given what we know about the way our minds are apt to go astray. In this way the doctrine is part of a tradition that includes Descartes´s "Regulae" and Spinoza´s project for improving the understanding. In any case, it is clear that Bacon thinks that a theory of knowledge will be of use to us in the matter of giving practical epistemic advice only if it pays close attention to human psychology./
The New Method:
Bacon termed his own method the "Interpretation of Nature." In brief, it is a methodical, indeed, meant to be mechanical, process whereby axioms are arrived at slowly and deliberately rather than by "flying from particulars to the most general axioms." Induction, of course, is a way of moving to general conclusions, of the Form all As are F, from a finite number of particular observations: This A is F, that A is F, and so forth, Bacon condemns induction by simple enumeration largely because it seeks only to confirm hypotheses and because, at least as practiced, it is haphazard./ Bacon´s own method begins with the gathering of a "complete and accurate natural and experimental history." This is to provide data for the method. It is here, in particular, that Bacon´s often mentioned failure to pay sufficient attention to the role of hypothesis in science becomes apparent. For how, we must ask, are we to know where to look for the relevant data without being guided and directed by some tentative hypothesis? / Once one has the relevant data, one is able to make use of the method of induction Bacon recommends. In some of the most famous pages of the "Novum Organum2, Bacon illustrates his method by means of an example concerning heat./ The goal of the method, as we have already suggested, is to discover the form of heat. Toward this end, one arranges the natural history of heat into Tables of Presence, absence, and Comparison. (I will ignore the last for brevity´s sake) Thus: Table of Presence: Rays of the Sun, All Flame, Ignited Solids, Boiling Liquids Table of Absence: Rays of the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, Ignus Fatuus, Static Electricity, Sparks, Unignited Solids, Liquids in their Natural State.
Bacon provides many such examples. Since the object is to find the form of heat that is the nature under investigation, one wants cases in the Table of Presence in which heat is present but that concern many different kinds of substances. In this way one will not be seduced by merely salient copresent natures. The form of heat must have something to do with what is common to all cases in the Table of Presence. In turning to the Table of Absence, one searches for cases that share many of their natures with the cases in the Table of Presence but in which the nature under investigation is absent. Thus, all of the natures present in both tables can be ignored as the form of the nature under investigation. It is perhaps surprising that given the resources of this method Bacon, after surveying the tables of heat, suggests that its form is "a motion exapnsive, restrained and acting in its strife upon the smaller parts of bodies." This seems to anticipate the modern view that heat is molecular motion. This conclusion, Bacon emphasizes, is only the first step, a "first vintage." But it must also be emphasized that Bacon is not clear about how investigation is then to proceed./ Two features of the method should be emphasized. In a comparison of the tables, Bacon notes that experiments will be suggested. One will need to ascertain whether or not, in unclear cases, the nature under investigation really is present or absent. To determine this, experimental and controlled environments will be necessary. Second, the method is rightly regarded as anticipating the view that in the sciences one must seek not to confirm a theory by looking for positive evidence; rather one must seek data that would disconfirm one´s view. Bacon recognized the importance of the negative instance in scientific methodology. While it is true that Bacon´s method can be criticized on may fronts, it should not be forgotten that he properly emphasized the role of experiment and the cnetrality of seeking disconfirming evidence.U/ It is not apparent how it is that from the tables one is to arrive at the form of a given nature, since that is something unobservable. Conjecture and hypothesis must be at work if the method is to get off the ground. Bacon was aware of the difficulties here but even so he seemed to think that the method, rightly used, will single out some one form./ Bacon is typically regarded as failing to understand the importance of mathematics in the sciences. He does know that careful quantification will be necessary in making observation, but it must be admitted that, for Bacon, mathematics remains an "appendix" of science./ We have already mentioned the most familiar criticism of Bacon: That he does not comprehend the role that conjecture or hypothesis must play in science. Indeed, the term "Baconian" is, in some circles a term of derision, pointing to a methodology that would seek the simple facts and then, somehow, purified of all hypothesis, reach the single, correct explanation of the phenomena. This is a naive picture, both of scientific methodology and of Bacon. He is, of course, at pains to criticize an ad hoc unresponsiveness to the data of scientific practice. As a result, it is not surprising that he might fail to appreciate the role that hypothesis must play in science. Indeed, his discussion of his own method makes it apparent that conjecture will play a role. Even so, it must be owned that Bacon, largely because of his antipathy to the scientific practice of his times, undervalued the legitimate role of hypothesis in science./ Stil, if Bacon is rightly criticized for certain failures, he remains a figure of enduring importance in the history of scientific methodology. The wonder is not that he failed to anticipate all that is currently regarded as sound scientific practice. Rather, the wonder is that he anticipated so much.//
GALILEO GALILEI
Born: 1564, Pisa , Italy
Died: 1642, Florence , Italy
Major Works: "The Sidereal Messenger" (1610), "The Assayer" (1623), "Dialogue on the Two Great World Systems" (1632), "Discourses on Two New Sciences" (1638)
Major Ideas:
~ Observation bears out the truth of the Copernican theory that the earth is not the center of the universe.
~ Aristotle´s claim that heavier bodies fall faster than lighter ones can be disproved by observation.
~ Controlled experimentation and the use of quantitative methods of reporting observations yield better results than do casual observations and extended discussion of qualities and tendencies.
~ Authoritarian pronuncements about real phenomena must be tested against the evidence given us in nature. ~ The Universe is written in the language of mathematics. / Galileo Galilei is best known as the central figure in the great scientific revolution that transformed European thought in the seventeenth century. That revolution began hestiantly with the publication of a sun-centered cosmology in 1543 by Nicolaus Copernicus, whose methods of argument were still distinctly medieval. It was completed with the work of Isaac Newton, who was first to achieve a full and clear formulation of the basic laws of motion and gravitation that became the foundation for the modern science of physics./ Galileo´s birth into the household of the well-known musician Vincenzo Galilei, following some years after the death of Copernicus, gave him the advantage of the mature flowering of the Renaissance. His death, within a few months of Newton´s birth, was in a world beginning to feel the influence of Descartes and soon to see significant support for science as a deliberate enterprise through the formation of groups such as the Royal society of London and the French Académie des Sciences. Where Copernicus had made a first tentative tug at the helm of natural philosophy, Galielo spun the wheel clear around to take the ship of thought out of the straits of authoritarianism and steer it toward the open seas of free scientific inquiry./ Galielo received a broad education, including some study of medicine at the University of Pisa. But his natural interests led him toward physics, and he left in 1585 withoutt a degree. His talent and accomplishments became well enough known that he obtained a position teaching mathematics at the University of Pisa in 1589. But after conflicts with Aristotelian philosophers there, he moved to the chair of mathematics at the University of Padua in 1592, where he taught until 1610. He provides one of the first models for the modern consultant, having advised the city of Venice, among others, on such things as optics, ballistics, and fortifications./ Galileo might have simply lived another twenty years as a successful academic whose thoughtful experiments helped lay the foundations for the birth of physics had it not been for the advent of the telescope. Though Galileo did not invent this instrument, as soon as he saw one, he understood its working principles and quickly produced the first of a series of telescopes of increasingly better quality./ When he turned his telescope toward the skies in the summer of 1609, he made a stunning series of discoveries that transformed both his own life and the history of ideas in European civilization. He became a celebrity, both for good and for ill, and fell into a conflict with the Roman Catholic church that remains a touchstone for every discussion of the proper relation between science and religious belief./ Galileo´s telescopes were good enough that within a matter of months he discovered spots on the sun, mountains on the moon, phases of Venus like those of our moon, four satellites orbiting Jupiter, "ears" on Saturn (later recognized as rings), and the starry makeup of the Milky Way. The image quality was still poor by modern standards, however, and many who looked through the first telescopes could not easily confirm Galileo´s reports. In March of 1610, he published a small book "The Sidereal Messenger", describing some of these discoveries. He was shortly rewarded with an appointment as philosopher and mathematician to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, which enabled him to resign his duties in Padua and pursue his studies in whatever way he chose./
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Galileo had already been sympathetic to the Copernican way of thought, but the new discoveries armed him with the first really compelling arguments in itts favor. The paths of Jupiter´s moons made it clear that objects other than the earth could be centers of motion, and the phases of Venus proved that it is sometimes beyond the sun, thus elimiating Ptolemy´s earth-centered cosmology. Discussion of this new information caused quite a stir. with Galileo being at its center not only in his role as discoverer but also because he was very articulate. He took advantage of his celebrity to present both arguments and demonstrations in favor of his anti-Aristotelian views on falling bodies as well. He seems to have relished the attention, but his self-assurance bordered sometimes on arrogance, and he was not always gracious to his opponents. Of these he had a number, in several cases owing to other, extraneous disputes./ The opposition of the Catholic church was to wome extent social or political as much as it was religious, since threats to its authority represented in church thinking an undermining of the entire social order. Neither was this opposition by any means monolithic. Leading Jesuit astronomers were among Galileo´s friends in the early years, as was Maffeo Cardinal Barberini, who was to become Pope Urban VIII in 1623. Nevertheless there were denuciations to the Inquisition that led to Galileo´s being instructed early in 1616 not to advocate the Copernican theory, though it remains difficult to determine precisely how strong a prohibition was imposed./ For some time Galileo turned to other things. He took what we see as the wrong side in an argument about several comets that where seen in 1618. A later stage in that dispute led to "The Assayer", which appeared in 1623. It is seen by some as a masterpiece of polemical philosophy, including detailed exposition of the underlying principles of experimental science and the empiricist position. But for its physical thought it seems today a minor and relatively uninteresting little book -unless Pietro Redondi could be right in his recent (but generally disputed) proposal that Galileo´s discussion of atomism here was in some people´s eyes even more heretical than his Copernicanism./ In 1624, Galileo visited Rome and recieved what he took to be encouragement to undertake the project that, after several interruptions, finally appeared in 1632 as the "Dialogue". In four "days" of Socratic conversations among its characters, Simplicio presents the traditional Aristotelian views while Salviati speaks for Galileo in advocating new thinkking. Sagredo acts as a supposedly impartial listener, who of course is finally more impressed by Salviati´s arguments. In its writing, the "Dialogue" was very effective; the wit, the style, and the use of vernacular Italian rather than Latin all helped it reach a wide audience. The quality of its physics is mixed. On the one hand, Galileo is very telling in his use of falling bodies to emphasize that proper understanding of inertia does away with the whole family of anti-Copernican objections that suppose a moving earth would leave loose objects behind. But on the other hand, he presents arguments about the movement of sunspots and about the origin of tides that are quite specious. So the real importance of this work lies not so much in any of its details as in its overall thrust of forcing the reader to seriously contemplate the Copernican possibility and to do so in physical rather than purely philosophical or authoritarian terms./ The book was hardly off the press before it was denounced, and within a few months the Holy Office ordered its sales stopped. Galileo was summoned to Rome for trial on charges of transgressing orders not to teach or defend the motion of the earth, and of falsely attributing the tides to the earth´s movement. At first he attempted the defense that he had not really advocated the Copernican view at all, presenting it only as a hypothesis and a rather weak one at that; but no actual reader of the book would have gotten such an impression. In the end he was forced in 1633 to "abjure, curse, and detest the above-mentioned errors and heresies." He had always considered himself a loyal Catholic, and as Langford says, it was Galileo the scientist who wrote, but Galileo the believer who recanted./ In the tragedy of that trial, we can see one positive outcome: When Galileo returned to live out his life near Florence under house arrest, he resumed work on some less controversial problems in physics. His work in this area was largely done between about 1590 and 1610, and he had been planning to publish it when interrupted by the astronomical discoveries. Subsequent disputes as well as intermittent illness had kept him distracted. Now he finally took up these ideas again and integrated them into the "Discourses on Two New Sciences", published at Leyden in 1638 away from the control of Catholic censors. Free from the emotional debate on Copernicanism, this is the work that best shows us Galieleo as a worthy Builder of the foundations of physics./ "Two New Sciences" is also in dialogue form, utilizing the same three characters. Bit it is less consistent in style, less polished and accessible. This is partly due to the more technical subject matter, but also stems from its being completed as time was running out and Galileo´s health was very poor. The subjects dealt with include the strength of materials, impacts, friction, floating bodies, motion through resisting media and through vacuum, string vibrations, and parabolic trajectories./ In the first day of "Two New Sciences" is a clever argument against Aristotle´s claim that heavier bodies fall faster. We are asked to envision two small bodies falling slowly side by side; if joined together by even a tenuous connection they now constitute a larger body - but do we really believe that now they will fall twice as fast? The second day of the "Dialogue" similarly has ingenious arguments about motion on an inclined plane to clarify what should happen in vertical fall and in unimpeded horizontal motion. Both of these examples illustrate Galileo´s great talent for using "thought experiments" to mediate between vague theoretical expectations and the difficulties of real-life experiments, such as frictional forces and lack of precise timekeeping instruments. Galileo ranks with Einstein as one of the most creative users of this method of developing convincing physical theories./ Galileo deserves credit for advocating extended and well-controlled experiments, in preference to mere collection of assorted casual observations. He also emphasized the importance of quantitative methods over discussions of qualities and tendencies. As Ira cohen has suggested, while Galileo was hardly the first scientist to do experiments, he was one of the first who made both experiments and mathematical analysis integral parts of his science. This does not mean, however, that he fully anticipated Newtonian physics. In spite of his extensive contributions, as Drake points out, Galileo did not have in mind the grand program we know as "the mechanical philosophy"; that is due more to Descartes. But he did pioneer something we are accustomed to expect in science today, placing a high value on unforeseen discoveries and novel explanations -a goal for which the universities of Galileo´s time did not ordinarily strive./ An important part of Galileo´s story is his personal style. In comparison with his slightly younger contemporary Kepler, Galileo impresses us less as a mystic and more as the first example of a modern scientific personality. He was no less concerned to achieve scientific results than to convey them effectively, taking great pains to remork his ideas into more and more convincing arguments. He was a skilled debater, not above exploiting opportunities to make hyis opponents look ridiculous. Unfortunately, as de Santillana has pointed out, Galileo´s celebrity in his own time had all too little to do with real understanding: "His was the tragedy of an excess of gifts; ... his contemporaries could easily recognize a master; but what remained with them of his "incomparable demonstrations" was as dim as the memory of a symphony to the untrained ear." / Galileo´s contributions to science have an important philosophical component. Most obvious is his insistence that authoritarian pronouncements about real phenomena must be tested against the evidence given to us in nature. This was not mere rebellion; he saw it as ultimately aiding true spirituality. When on trial, he said, "It would be to the greatest detriment of souls to be forbidden to believe that which is later made plain before their eyes." Salviati speaks powerfully for him in the first day of the "Dialogue": "If what we are discussing were a point of a law or of the humanities, in which neither true nor false exists, one might trust in subtlety of mind and readiness of tongue and in the greater experience of the writers, and expect him who excelled in those things to make his reasoning most plausible, and one might judge it to be the best.
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But in the natural sciences, whose conclusions are true and necessary and have nothing to do with human will, one must take care not to place oneself in the defense of error; for here a thousand Demostheneses and a thousand Aristotles would be left in the lurch by every mediocre wit who happened to hit upon the truth for himself." / Galileo also insisted that natural philosophy could not disdain mathematics. One of his best-known statements come from "The Assayer": "Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it." In the words of Langford, this is the divorce of science from philosophy -true science, demonstrative knowledge, must be mathematical; mere concepts of potency and final cause are practically useless./
JOHANNES KEPLER:
Born: 1571, Weil-der-Stadt , Germany
Died: 1630, Regensburg , Germany
Major Works: "Mysterium Cosmographicum" (1596), "Astronomia Nova" (1609), "Harmonice Mundi" (1618), "Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae" (1617-21), "Tabulae Rudolphinae" (1627)
Major Ideas:
~ God did not create the universe haphazardly: A rational architecture underlies the structure of the solar system.
~ Three laws govern the motion of the planets. 1. The planets move in elliptical, not circular; orbits. 2. The velocities of the plantes are not uniform but vary at different points in their orbits; the areas swept by the radius vecors in equal times are equal. 3. The velocities of the planets relative to each other can be expressed mathematically: The squeares of the periods of revolution are proportional to the cubes of the distances from the sun. ~ A force emanating from the sun governs the motion of the celestial bodies. ~Weight arises from the mutual attraction between the bodies. ~ Aristotelian physics, which postulates four terrestrial elements (earth, air, fire, water) with weight and one celestial element (the ether) without, is false; celestial matter is not fundamentally different from terrestrial matter, and the physics of celestial motion is no different from that of terrestrial motion. /
The work of Johannes Kepler marks a fundamental advance over the Aristotelian physics and Ptolemaic astronomy inherited from antiquity. His immediate predecessor copernicus, who wrote the first systematic expoisition of heliocentric astronomy ("De Revolutionibus", 1543), had maintained the earlier postulates: Celestial bodies move with uniform circular motions; the vissible motions can be modeled by supplying a sufficient number of deferents and epicycles; no motive force is needed, because the planets move of their own nature. Kepler´s deep-seated belief that the sun emits a force that pervades the cosmos and drives all the celestial bodies on their coursesm, a belief which meshed well with his Christian faith, led him to investigate the causes of celestial motions and to postulate the existence of a force, now called gravity, which links the cosmos into one organism. His willingness to treat the planets as objects having the same nature as terrestrial bodies enabled him to discard the necessity for circular motions and to adopt elliptical orbits. His mathematical curiosity drove him to make correlations between what had been considered unrelated phenomena and from these pehnomena to deduce laws./ Johannes Kepler was born to a respectable family of Weil-der-Stadt, in Würtemberg, southern Germany . His grandfather was the mayor of Weil, his father a professional soldier who campaigned in the low countries. Affter preparatory schooling, Kepler entered the university at Tübingen in 1588. There he was influenced by the astronomy professor Michael Maestlin, a thorougoing Copernican. In 1594, Kepler, although he had almost completed his graduate program in theology, was assigned to teach mathematicas at the Lutheran school in Graz , Austria . This fortuitous appointment, made over Kepler´s protests, must count as one of the turning points in scientific history. He had hardly any pupils, and his additional duties, which included preparing almanacs and astrological forecasts for the Province of Styria , left him the leisure to meditate on the structure of the universe. The results of these meditations appeared in his first book, the "Misterium Cosmographicum"./ This text is characteristic of all Kepler´s works. Its style, a combination of wild fancy and detailed sober mathematical investigation, strikes the modern reader as bizarre, and its goal, an attempt ot explain the principles by which God created the universe in its existing configuration, recalls traditional philosophical teleology./ In the prefatory chapter of the "Mysterium Cosmographicum", Kepler outlines the Copernican hypothesis and defends it, not on the basis that it simplifies computation -its usual defense- but on the basis that it describes reality and explains phenomena that hitherto had simply been accepted as "natural": Planets at apogee (farthest from the earth) are at the same time in conjunction with the sun because they are on the other side of the sun from the earth, at perigee (closest to the earth) they are in opposition to the sun because the earth is between them and the sun; Mercury and Venus never appear in opposition to the sun because their orbits are between the earth and the sun; and a number of other points./ It must be remembered that in the fifty years after Copernicus´s "De Revolutionibus" appeared, his system had not been widely accepted, largely because it represented celestial motions no better than did Ptolemy´s observations of 1400 years earlier. Like most of his contemporaries, Copernicus had treated his heliocentric model as a computational convenience, not as an accurate descrioption of reality. Kepler was not satisfied with this: He wanted to discover the structure of reality./ He recounts in detail how this discovery was made "by a gift of divine Providence ." Since God did not create haphazardly, perhaps the mathematician could divine the architecture behind the creation. Therefore Kepler tried to correlate planetary orbits with numbers, ratios, and plane figures, but nothing worked. He then tried to nest the five regular solids between the planetary orbits: Between the earth and Mars he circumscribed a dodecahedron (twelve sides); between Mars and Jupiter he placed a tetrahedron; between Jupiter and Saturn he placed a cube. Then the inner planets: Between earth and Venus was an icosahedron (twenty sides), and between Venus and Mercury an octahedron. The editions of the "Mysterium Cosmographicum" have beautiful engravings of these nested solids. Kepler then calculated the relative distances of the planetary orbits assuming the intervening solids, and the correspondience with the truth was astonishing: After a little adjustment, everything fir within 5 percent. Thus he seemed to have discovered the geometrical structure that governed the solar system./ The final sections of the "Mysterium Cosmogrophicum" explain the orbital motion of the planets. These bodies do not move with the same velocities: For example, Saturn traverses its orbit at a solower rate than Jupiter traverses its orbit. Why is this? Kepler accepted Aristotle´s theory of motion (an object moves only so long as there is a force acting on the object), and he speculated that hte sun emits the necessary motive force, and that this force naturally weakens with distance. The sun is the Father, the motive force is the Holy Ghost, as he metaphorically expressed it. He tried to calculate the ratio between the planet´s velocity and its distance from the sun, but failed. In his later "Harmonice Mundi", he succeded when he formulated his third law./ The concepts outlined in the "Mysterium Cosmographicum" remained at the heart of Kepler´s work: the rationality of the created universe, the mathematical relationship between planetary orbits, the ratio between orbital period and distance from the sun, the force emanating from the sun. This work was still dear to him when he published a second edition with notes twenty-five years later (1621)./ Most important for later astrophysics was the importance attributed to the sun. In Copernican astronomy, the sun acted simply as an illuminator; all motion was referred to the center of the earth´s orbit, near which the sun happens to be located. It was Kepler who made the sun the dynamically active center of the cosmos./ The "Mysterium Cosmographicum" established Kepler as a leading theoretician. Most important for later astronomy, Tycho Brahe received a copy and responded in a letter that was as graciousa s the acerbic Danish astronomer could manage. For twenty years at his observatory on Hveen, an islan near Copenhagen , Brahe had been regularly observing and recording planetary positions and had a mass of data of unparalleled accuracy at his disposal. Leaving Hveen in 1597, Brahe had moved to Prague as the "Imperial Mathematician" of Rudolph II.
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Meanwhile, in 2599, Kepler was forced to leave Graz because of anti-Lutheran agitation. After learning of Brahe´s move, he set out for Prague to visit with the Dane. Brahe welcomed the younger astronomer and invited him to join his staff. Brahe was in the process of drawing up a new and more accurate set of astronomical tables, and Kepler was assigned the task of working out the theory of the motion of Mars. Despirte the personality conflicts between the two astronomers, Kepler later considered this assignment as an act of Providence, for through his tudies of this difficult planet he came to the theories described in his most important work, the "Astronomia Nova"./ In this work, Kepler describes his struggles to correlate Brahe´s observations of Mars´s orbit with various motions, first circular, then oval, finally elliptical. Continuing the speculations of the "Mysterium Cosmographicum", Kepler rethought his views on the mechanism by which the sun governed the planets. He knew that the planets´ velocities varied inversely with their distances from the sun, and under the influence of William Gilbert´s "De Magnete" (1600), he decided that a rotating sun drove the planets by means of magnetic vortices whose energy would be less for the more distant planets. (He makes the analogy with light, whose illuminating power decreases with distance.) First assuming that the orbits are eccentric "circles" (as did Ptolemy), he formulated his "second law" (chronologically the first): The radius vector of the orbit sweeps out equal areas in equal times. This law in its original form, applied to "circular" orbits, did not work for Mars, but left an 8´ discrpeancy: Mars 8´ closer to the earth at the orbital points 90 degrees from aphelion (point farthest from the sun) and from perihelion (point closest to the sun). Now, such a small amount would have been ignored by earlier astronomers, but Kepler knew that Brahe´s observations were accurate to 8´ . The discrepancy had to be resolved./ Kepler finally concluded that the planetary orbits are eliptical, not circular and eccentric, and that the sun is at one focus of the ellipse. This is his "first law". With the ellipse, he could reconcile Brahe´s observations with theory and supply a satisfactory dynamic for the sun-planet interaction. In adopting elliptical orbits, Kepler finally broke with the Aristotelian physics that had governed all earlier cosmological speculation. Aristotle had stated that the sublunary world consisted of earth, air, fire, and water, while the celestial world consisted of the fifth element, ether, whose primary "inherent" characteristic is its eternal circular motion -hence no further explanation of celestial motion was necessary. Kepler rejected this theory and laid the groundwork for modern astrophysics: the investigation of celestial motion on mechanical principles. The completion of these investigations in modern astrophysics became possible only with Newton´s calculus and Einstein´s relativity theory./ While finishing the "Astronomia Nova", Kepler began investigating optics, as had Ptolemy before him. His results were published as "Astronomiae Pars Optica" (1604). Its chapters discuss parallax and refraction, and show for the first time that vision proceeds by images formed on the retina of the eye. In this work no mention is made of lenses or telescopes. Not until 1610 did Kepler even have acces to a telescope; in that year he observed Jupiter, duplicating the observations of Galileo´s "Sidereus Nuncius"./ The years from 1611 to the end of his life were restless and troubled. His wife and several children died of disease in the troubles of the Counter-Reformation; his aged mother in Württemberg was accused of witchcraft (several months of the period from 1617-21 were devoted to her defense); and his protector; Rudolph II, abdicated in the face of riots in Prague . As a result of this last misfortune, Kepler moved to Linz , Austria , where he resided for fourteen years. During this period he prepared three major works, "Harmonic Mundi", "Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae", and the "Tabulae Rudolphinae". Among the minor works of this period are the "Stereometria doliorum vinariorum " ("The Measurement of Wine Casks"), in which he developed a precusor of the calculus to measure the volume of irregular solids; the "Somnium", the first science-fiction adventure, a trip to the moon; and a number of astrological almanacs, which he regularly produced to supplement his irregular income as imperial mathematician./ In the "Harmonice Mundi", Kepler elaborated concepts first outlined in the "Mysterium Cosmographicum". The basic principles of the cosmos are based on geometry: Specifically, the regular polygons are archetypal forms in the human soul as well as in the celestial world; when the planets in their orbits form angles corresponding to the angles of these polygons (for example, 90 degrees sqyare,, 60 degrees trine), they inspire and excite the soul. Kepler pursued this line of thought in his astrological writings. Musical harmony is also based on these angles: The ratios of the muscial scale (octave, fifth, and so forth) can be derived from the polygons by suitable construction. Furthermore, the planets´ orbital velocities create a harmony: (1) There is a simple ratio between the planet´s velocity at aphelion and its velocity art periphelion; (2) the squares of the periods of revolution of any two planets (the time in which they complete one orbit) are proportional to the cubes of their mean distances from the sun. This latter is Kepler´s "third", or "harmonic", "law", and his joy at its discovery was unbounded. In the final chapters of "Harmonice Mundi" he assigns musical "notes" to the planets at aphelion and periphelion and demonstrates by the variations in the "tunes" thus played by each planet the eccentricity of the orbit of each: Venus, with an almost circular orbit, plays a monotonous tune; the very eccentric Mercury runs up and down the scale./ Much of the "Harmonice Mundi" has been termed mystic fantasy, but this fantasy, as always, was founded on carefully observed fact and aimed at explicating the dynamics and structure of the solar system. Kepler´s imaginative mind structured and explained data in terms strange to us, but this exuberant imagination did succeed in discovering his three laws of planetary motion./ In the "Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae", Kepler summarized his own -not Copernicus´s- work on astronomy: The nested polygons of the "Mysterium", the elliptical orbits, and the sun´s propulsive force all appear. New in this book was his long theoretical justification of his third law.
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He establishes that a planet´s velocity on its orbit depends on four factors: (1) the length of the orbit; (2) the density of the planet; (3) the volume of the planet; and (4) the emanation from the sun, by which the sun sends into space a magnetic whirlwind that both carries the planets along and makes them rotate. The greater (1) and (2) are, the slower the planet; the greater (3) and (4) are, the faster the planet. One consequence is that the large, slower planets farther fro mthe sun (Jupiter, Satur) must be less dense, while tohse closer to the sun, particularly Mercury, must be very dense. Not knowng of the existence of Neptune or Pluto, Kepler could defend this law with telescopic pobservations showing the great size of the known outer planets. For him this third law simply stated a fact about the six known planets. In this work Kepler also developed an accurate theory of lunar motion: He was the first to calculate for the moon an elliptical orbit that is modified by the influence of the earth and the sun./ The "Tabulae Rudolphinae (Rudolphine Astronomical Tables), Kepler´s last major work, appeared three years before his death. These tables, whose remote ancestors were Ptolemy´s "Handy Tables", enabled astronomers to determine the position of any celestial body at any date, past or future, with unparalleled accuracy, and they quickly superseded all other tables. Their accuracy served as proof of the truth of Kepler´s astronomical theories. The use of the tables was explained in a preface, but the reader was referred to the "Epitome" for an explanation of their theoretical basis./ Kepler´s work is an example of the deduction of general laws from a mass of observations -the essence of science. But it was primarily his attempt to apply physical principles to astronomical data that marks his break with ancient astronomy. HIs work was completed by Isaac Newton, who reworked his ideas about the sun´s emanations and his three laws into a theory of universal gravitation and thus made Kepler´s speculations into principles of astrodynamics.
THOMAS HOBBES:
Born: 1588, Westport , Wilshire , England
Died: 1679, Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire , England .
Major Works: "De Cive" (1642), "Leviathan" (1651), "De Corpore" (1655), "De Homine" (1658)
Major Ideas:
- Knowledge is derived from sense experience and from reason: From sense experience we derive historical knowledge and prudence, and from reason we derive scientific and philosophical knowledge and wisdom.
~ Scientific or philosophical reason is esentially the same as that which is employed in mathematics, moving from definitions, axioms, and postulates to theorems derived logically from them.
~ Thought, sensation, memory, and imagination are nothing but a motion of some substance inside our heads; they are generally caused by motions of things outside us; consequently, secondary qualities (such as colors) do not exist in things, but are purely mental events caused by minute motions that stimulate our minds to produce certain sensations.
~ Only matter exists; there is no such thing as a purely spiritual being: This includes God.
~ Religion arises out of fear, ignorance, and efforts by rullers to maintin their advantage over their subjects.
~ Good and evil are simply what people desire or dislike; right and wrong are what are permitted or forbidden by law.
~ Human actions arise out of a desire for self-preservation, and the laws of nature permit any action reasonably intended for that purpose.
~ Monarchy is the best form of government.
Thomas Hobbes grew up during atime of considerable turmoil in England . His mother said that he was born prematurely because she was terrified at news of the approach of the Spanish Armada and feared an invasion by murderous idolaters. His father, a vicar, was evidently a drunk and had a rather pugnacious disposition. After staying up too late one Saturday night, he fell asleep in the middle of his service the following morning. Upon awakening, he announced to the congregation that clubs were trumps. After becoming involved in a brawl in front of his church with another clergyman, he fled to London and disappeared, leaving his family to fend for themselves. Thomas´s education was looked after by a rich uncle, who sent him to Oxford University when Thomas was fourteen years old. He later served as tutor to a wealthy yourng man, and enjoyed the benefits of a splendid library and foreign travel associated with that position. Hobbes was disenchanted with Aristotelianism even as a student, but became thoroughly convinced of the inadequacies of Aristotle´s philosophy during his visits to the Continent. At the same time, he was introduced to the earth-shaking discoveries of the great scientific and philosophical minds of the time: Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes, Gassendi, Harvey, and Bacon./ Hobbes rejected the theories concerning the nature of things that most ancient and medieval philosophers held. Contrary to the traditional view, he held that common nouns do not represent things. They are merely names that enable people to generalize about individual things that happen to have certain resemblances to one another./ He held that logic is never a source of knowledge as such. Knowledge of the existence of things comes only through sense perception. Logic provides a method for arriving at the relations between things -particularly causal relationships./ Sensations, he believed, are merely the result of the motions of objects pressing upon our sense organs. There is nothing but matter and the material things, both outside our bodies and within them. Thus, even though we may be inclined to think that theimages of our imaginations and dreams are immaterial things, that is not the case. Once an object (for example, a tolling bell or a fluttering moth) has set up a motion within us, creating the sensation of sound or sight, that motion may continue for a considerable time, like the waves of the ocean. With our eyes shut, we may continue to see an image of the thing we have stared at because of the motion it has initiated; and during our sleep, those same motions, more attenuated and "decayed," may give birth to new images. Memory is simply the resonance of an old, fading motion. There is a constant interaction between the brain and other parts of the body, so that certain trains of thought (motions within the brain) can either be initiatied by stimuli to other parts of the body or lead to arousal of those parts.
Only Matter Exists:
It was an essential part of Hobbes´s system that there are no disembodied spirits or souls. Only matter exists. He held that the idea of an "incorporeal substance" is self-contradictory. Hence, God must be a "most pure, simple, invisible, spirit corporeal." / The properties of things are what determine the sorts of things they are. Most properties, however, are variable, and are simply the effects those things have upon our sense organs and brains. Thus, though we customarily say that an apple is red, the "redness" does not exist in the apple iself -it is merely the effect the apple has on the eyes of a normal person. The only qualities that inhere in things themselves are extension (occupancy of a certain amount of space in various directions) and figure (a certain shape). The implication of this is that an object´s extension and figure are independent of anyone´s percepttions of it but its other qualities are not./
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Hobbes attributed man´s religious inclinations tofear and ignorance of the causes of things. When people do not understand what brings about good or evil fortune, they tend to make up imaginary causes or to trust the authority of others whom they believe are wise in such matters. When they lack understanding of the causes of things that frighten them, they assume that there must be some invisible power that controls their destinies. Clever men, eager to use any device to control others, have exploited these propensities to superstition to persuade others to obedience, peace, and civility. "The first founders and legislators of commonwealths... have in all places taken care, first, to imprint in their minds a belief that those precepts which they gave concerning religion might not be thought to proceed from their own device but from the dictates of some god or other spirit, or else mere mortals, that their laws might the more easily be received... Secondly, they have had a care to make it believed that the same things were displeasing to the gods which were forbidden by the laws." And finally, they prescribed various ceremonies and festivals by which the gods´ anger was supposed to be appeased, thus deflecting from themselves onto their insufficiently observant subjects the blame for defeat in war and for other calamities that might have afflicted their people. Thus the people were "less apt to mutiny against their governors" and being entertained by festivals and rittuals in honor fo the gods would be kept from "discontent, murmuring, and commotion against the state." / Hobbes believed that all human beings are equal -not in their bodily strength or in their mental capacity but in their vulnerability to being killed by others. The weakest , he said, have strength enough to kill the strongest, and the least intelligent enough practical wisdom to kill the most intelligent. Since all persons want more or less the same things, they are in constant competition. Sometimes this competition is for things that are essential for the preservation of their lives, but at other times it may simply be for what will give them pleasure. If one person has more than others, he may expect his neighbors to unite in order to deprive him, "not only of the fruit of his labor, but also of his life or liberty." / People are inclined to fight with one another to gain what they do not yet have or to protect what they do have against others who want to take it from them, and sometimes simply for glory, for "trifles, as a word, a smile, a different opinion, and any other sign of undervalue."
The War of All Against All:
Thus, as long as there is no common power to maintain order, all people are in a state of war with one another -a war of all against all. This war exists even when no arms are bieng employed; it is a kind of cold war; in which everyone is in constant danger from everyone else and constantly apprehensive about that danger. This situation, which Hobbes calls the state of nature, is such that no one can trust anyone else, and everyone is in constant fear of violent death. Consequently, none of the benefits of civilization are possible in that state -no agriculture, no education, no exports or imports, no society, and, worst of all, "the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." / Put in another way, the state of nature is one in which there is no government, no law, no sense of right and wrong. It is a state of anarchy, in which everyone has a right to anything, even to another´s body. Where there is no law, there is no right or wrong, no justice or injustice. Everything is permitted because there is no force, except each individual´s own ability, to stop anyone from doing anything he or she pleases./ Hobbes maintains that all persons have a natural liberty or right to do whatever is necessary, in their own judgment, to preserve themselves. Reason leads to certain laws of nature that forbid a person to do anything that may be self-destructive or to omit doing anything that may preserve oneself. From this, Hobbes writes, it follows that everyone ought to seek peace. Because life in the state of nature is so precarious, it is necessary to do whatever one can to get out of that state and into a safer one. To get out of the state of nature, which is a state of war, it is necessary to seek peace.
Law and the Social Contract:
Since the state of nature is one in which there is no law, ti follows that a state of peace must be one in which there is law. And since a state in which there is law is one in which people do not have a right to all things (for law imposes duties on people and places restrictions on them), in order to get out of the state of nature it is necessary for each person to give up some of the rights he or she has and assume some obligations./ This is not to say that people should give up all of their rights, for Hobbes makes it clear that some rights are inalienable -that is, cannot be given to anyone else. The rights of life, liberty, and having "the means of so preserving life as not to be weary of it" are inalienable, for they are the very prupose for which other rights are given up./ Therefore, Hobbes says, people should enter into a social contract, a voluntary agreement in which each person gives up certain rights on the condition that others do so as well. No contract, however, has any meaning unless there is someone to enforce it. Consequently, the contracting parties must agree with one another to appoint or elect some person whose duty it will be to enforce the conditions of their agreement. Once this is done, that person is known as the sovereign, and the others are the subjects. It is important to remember that the contract is between the subjects and that the sovereign is not a party to it. The sovereign remains outside the contract, for his tsk is to enforce the agreement betweem tje "sovereign" and the subjects. Since this leads to an infinite regress, Hobbes avoids it by leaving the sovereign in the state of nature. Thus, the sovereign can commit no injustice, for injustice is a violation of the law and the sovereign is not subject to the law.
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Sovereigns have a wide range of powers, acccording to Hobbes, and they cannot forfeit them since they cannot breach a covenant they have never entered into. Hobbes was firmly opposed to any separation of powers. He argued that the best goverment is one in which the sovereign enjoys the powers of the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary, for it is hte most efficient and the most stable, so long as the sovereign remains physically and mentally fit. Hobbes believed that one of the most important of the sovereign´s powers is the power of censorship, for actions proceed from opinions, and if peace is to regin, it is essential that subversive opinions be repressed./ Finally, Hobbes believed that the sovereign should have the power to punish worngdoers. Moreover, Hobbes´s conception of punishment was rather specific. He argued that penalties must be carefully designed to fulfill a specific purpose: "that the will of men may thereby the better be disposed to obedience." Thus, a penalty that is too light would be nothing more than a fee for the privilege of committing a wrong, while the imposition of one that is too heavy Hobbes characterized as an act of hostility. In any case, he believed that the aim of punishment is not revenge, but deterrence- a far cry from the theory advocated a century later by Immanuel Kant, who believed that the only morally acceptable justification for punishment is retribution./ It is appropriate to conclude by noting that Hombbes anticipated many of the major principles that went into the founding of the American republic, including not only the doctrine of inalienable rights, but also such a specific right as the right not to be compelled to testify against oneself, incorporated into the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Nevetheless, Hobbes was no believer in democracy. On the contrary, he was a powerful and consistent advocate of a virtually unlimited monarchy. He did not place a high value on personal liberty. Efficiency, law and order, and above all the preservation of peace are the principal aims of good government. Hobbes did not believe that freedom of the press, freedom of speech, or even freedom of religion are necessary constituents of individual happiness. More important than all of these is the preservation of the state itself and the struggle to avoid slipping back into the state of nature, that dreadful situation in which everyone is at war with everyone else./
PIERRE GASSENDI:
Born: 1592, Champtercier , Provence , France
Died: 1655, Paris , France
Major Works: "Exercitationes paradoxicarum adversus Aristoteleos" (1624), "Disquisitio Metaphysica, seu dubitationes et instantiae adversus Renati Cartesii metaphysica et responsa" (1644), "De vita et moribus Epicuri" (1647) , "Syntagma philosophicum" (1658) /
Major Ideas:
~ Aristotelianism is useless as a philosophy or basis for science.
~ Skepticism, in a mitigated form, allows for limited knowledge.
~ Epicurean atomism is the best hypothesis for explaining the natural world.
~ Epicureanism can be modified so that it is compatible with Christian beliefs. /
Pierre Gassendi is best known for his revival of the atomic theory of Epicurus, advanced as a hypothetical system for modern science. He developed this view as a way of dealing with the results of applying skepticism to Scholastic philosophy. He avoided de consequences of complete skepticism by advancing a mitigated skepticism, what he called a via media between dogmatism and skepticism. Gassendi, a Catholic priest, also Christianized ancient Epicurean thought by rejecting its views about the nature of the soul and the role of Divine Providence. Instead he accepted the teachings of his church on faith. he was one of the most serious critics of Descartes´s philosophy./ Gassendi studied at Digne and Aix in Provence . He was a prodigy and was appointed a professor at the age of twenty-one. In 1614, when he was twenty-two, he received a doctorate in theology at Avignon , and was ordained as a priest two years later. He became professor of philosophy at Aix in 1617, and remained there until 1623, when the university was taken over by the Jesuits. His course there developed into a massive critique of Aristotelian philosophy and a statement of his mitigated skepticism. He published the first part, criticizing the basic features of Aristotle´s system, in 1624. The second part, developing his skepticism, was set aside because of the condemnation of anti-Aristotelianism in Paris in 1624, and was published posthumously in his complete works in 1658./ After leaving his university post, Gassendi became part of an avant-garde scientific group patronized by Peiresc in Provence . In 1625, Gassendi visited Paris , and there formed a lifetime friendship with Father Marin Mersenne, a central figure in the scientific revolution and in the development of modern ideas. Gassendi workked with various scientists and mathematicians, and produced important observations in astronomy tending to confirm the Copernican thory. He joined Mersenne in fighting off alchemists and astrologers. He also wrote a sharp critique of Herbert of Cherbury´s "De Veritate"./ From his attack on Aristotelianism, and his development of a skepticism about metaphysical knowledge, he became interested in presenting a theory that could avoid skeptical criticism and provide a basis for modern scientific knowledge. He found such a theory in the writings of Epicurus. For the rest of his life, he was editing Epicurus´s texts, establishing the most correct information about Epicurus, answering arguments leveled against Epicureanism, and developing a modified Epicureanism./ Gassendi was made provost of the Cathedral of Digne in 1634. In 1645, he was appointed to the chair of mathematics at the Royal College (now the College de France). In 1641 he was asked by Mersenne to write out his opinions of Descartes´s new metaphysical system, which had just appeared in Descartes´s "Meditations". Gassendi attacked Descartes´s theory from both a skeptical and a materialist point of view. His objections, the fifth set appended to the 1641 edition of the "Meditations", outraged Descartes, who wrote a very nasty reply. Gassendi expanded his critique into a full-fledged work, the "Disquisitio Metaphysica" of 1644, which was perhaps the most complete answer to Descartes developed at the time./ After this, Gassendi began publishing a series of works on Epicurenaism, starting with his thorough humanistic study "De Vita et moribus Epicuri" in eigtht books in 1647. In the best learned tradition of the time, Gassendi sifted out the facts from fictions about the historical Epicurus. In 1649 he published a most careful analysis of the tenth book of Diogenes Laertius´s "Lives of the Philosophers, the book on Epicurus and Epicureanism, from which most of the criticisms of Epicureanism had come. In the same year he published a systematic exposition of Epicurus´s philosophy wit han answer to those who claimed this philosophy was anti-Christian./ Gassendi´s most complete presentation of his own ideas, and his interpretation and modernization of Epicureanism, appeared only after his death, in a work he had been composing for years, "Syntagma philosophicum", which takes up the first two folio volumes of the complete works, published in 1658.
Exercitationes paradoxcarum adversus Aristoteleos:
In the first part of this work, Gassendi followed in the tradition of the Renaissance humanists Francesco Patrizi and Pierre de la Ramée (Peter Ramus) in seeking to demonstrate the weak, dubious, and erroneous features of Aristotelianism. He criticized the jargon of the Scholastics and their arguments and inquiries. He attacked the Aristotelians for slavishly following their master instead of openly inquiring about the world. He showed the unclarity of some of Aristotle´s definitions, the uselessness of his demonstrations, and the contradictions in his philosophy. It is a most detailed, almost stupifying critique./
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The second book moves from textual analysis to a skeptical examination of the whole Aristotelian anterprise. Using the skepticism developed in the ancient Greek texts of Sextus Empiricus, together with the modern skeptical efforts of Montaigne, Carron, and Sanches, Gassendi first sought to show the artificiality of Aristotelian logic and its worthlessness as a mens of discovering truths. Proofs, according to Aristotle, begin with universal proporsitions, such as "All men are mortal." But we can tell if this is true only if we have examined ever case, past, present, and future -all men who ever have or will or could exist. Since this cannot be accomplished, we can never arrive at a universal proposition from which to commence our proof. In fact, the conclusion of a syllogism, such as "Socrate is mortal," is not really a conclusion, but is part of the evidence for the universal premise. Hence, Aristotle´s method of demonstrating truths turns out to be circular./ From this examinatio of Aristotle´s method, Gassendi clncluded that "knowledge such as Aristotle describes it cannot exist." He applied a range of skeptical objects to undermine the possibility of science, or knowledge, in Aristotle´s sense. Our factulties can be doubted, our information can be doubted, our information can be doubted. Hence, as Francisco Sanches a generation earlier had said, "nihil scitur" (nothing is known)./ Having developed a complete skepticism against Aristotelianism, Gassendi then introduced his "mitigated skepticism," namely, that we possess a kind of knowledge in spite of all of the difficulties. Although we cannot know the essences of things, what they realle are, and why they are what they are, nonetheless we ko know how they appear to us. Sciences can be developed on the basis of these limited data. We can find sufficient certainty and evidence in terms of appearances to deal with questions that concern us. Gassendi applied his "mitigated skepticism" even to mathematics, saying "whatever certainty and evidence there is in mathematics is related to appearances, and in no way related to genuine causes or the inner natures of things." / Gassendi began to see Epicurean atomism as the best way of understanding or relating experiences. Epicureanism was for him a hypothetical system rather than a metaphysical one. he felt that Epicurus´s views had been misrepresented and misunderstood. Hence, before he could present his hypothetical Epicureanism, he had first to do a great deal of scholarly, humanistic research to establish the correct texts of Epicurus and to interpret them. He was also concerned to obviate the Christian religious objections to Epicurus´s philosophy. Hence, in interpreting his view, he sought to show that , if restricted and modified, it could be compatible with orthodox Christianity./ Gassendi´s life of Epicurus, his materialist critique of Descartes´s views, and his edition of the Epicurean texts were preparations for the presentation of Gassendi´s atomistic philosophy./
Syntagma philosophicum:
Gassendi´s final work, the "Syntagma philosophicum", begins with a book on logic, evaluating the ways of finding truth. He discusses Aristotelian, Stoic, and Epicurean theories and shows how they were criticized by the skeptics. As long as one is trying to find out the real nature of things, one is bound to fail. But if one will accept a shadow of truth, rather than truth itself, one can gain positive results. Gassendi proposed a "via media" between skepticism and dogmatism that he found in the empirical side of Epicureanism. If one restricts inquiry to what can be known in the world of appearances, then it is possible to establish some standards for judging what is true and what is false, and on this basis one can develop a tentative science./ Gassendi applied his hypothetical view of a science of appearances to working out a theory of the empirical natural world that would encompass the results of such figures as Copernicus, Galileo, Gassendi himself, and other early modern scientists. Instead of offering a metaphysical theory, as Descartes or Hobbes did, Gassendi offered an atomic model as a way of connecting various phenomena. The atomic world was described in terms of visible properties. And relations among atoms were offered as ways of explanation of natural phenomena. Gassendi thought it was possible to describe all that is known about nature in this manner. One can predict future observations on the basis of this hypothetical atomism. As long as one does not turn the hypothetical atoms into metaphysical atoms, one doe not become enmeshed in dogmatic and unverifiable theorizing./ Gassendi´s tentative atomism rivaled Cartesianism and Scholasticism as the best way of understanding man´s knowledge of nature during the seventeenth century. Some of the Jesuits, who forced the condemnation of Cartesianism in the latter part of the seventeenth century, proposed Gassendi´s atomism as the best science to be taught and studied. For better or worse, Gassendi´s view was replaced by Newton´s physics, in part because there did not seem to be any way of really applying Gassendi´s model to nature, since one did not know what atomic configurations best accounted for what observations. It was only with the development of modern chemistry in the nineteenth century that scientific atomism began to develop as a serious way of explaining phenomena./ In ancient times, Epicureanism atomism had been condemned as irreligious. When the views of Epicurus and Lucretius were revived during the Renaissance, similar compalints were made about ancient atomism. Gassendi took it upon himself to explicate what Epicurus in fact said, to answer misguided criticism, and to modify Epicureanism by reference to moder scientific knowledge and to traditional Christian doctrines. In areas where Epicureanism was clearly in opposition to Christian teaching, Gassendi abandoned such parts of the theory and said that he accepted whatever the Church taught. He did not accept Epicurus´s view of the physical and mortal nature of the soul and of the non-Providential nature of the course of events. He was willing to some extent to utilize Epicurus´s empiricual theology, as a way of explaining how people come to their notions about God./ Although it might seem that Epicureanism, as a materialist view, would have to conflict with Christianity, Gassendi provided a reconciliation by dropping parts of Epicureanism. The Church never challenged his orthodoxy or censured his works, but some scholars since have assumed that he must have been a freethinker. His views were disseminated all over Europe . Som of his work was translated into English, and proficed the basis for a Neo-Epicureanism that was accepted by many leading English-speaking thinkers. John Locke, among others, was influenced by his views and adopted some of them in his own empirical philosphy./ In the eighteenth century, Gassendi´s views were replaced by Newtonianism as the philosophy of modern science. Gassendi´s writings, ponderous humanistic philological tomes, were set aside for shorter expositions and arguments. Gassendi has been remembered as an early materialist (albeit a hypothetical one), as the reviver of Epicurean atomism, and as one of the most acute critics of Descartes. He is just beginning to be read and studied again and to be awarded his rightful place as one of the major figures in the making of the modern mind./
RENÉ DESCARTES:
Born: 1596, Le Haye in Touraine , France
Died: 1650, Stockholm , Sweden .
Major Works: "Rules for the Direction of the Mind" (written c. 1630; published 1701), "Treatise on the World" (1633, but published posthumously), "Discourse on Method" (1637), "Meditations on First Philosophy" (1641), "Principles of Philosophy" (1644).
Major Ideas:
~The method for the discovery of truth is analytic and consists of four rules: (1) Accept nothing as true except what can be clearly perceived to be so and nothing more than can be perceived so clearly and distinctly that one cannot have occasion to doubt it. (2) divide up each problem into as many parts as possible and resolve each in the best manner possible. (3) Carry on one´s reflections in due order; beginning with the most and proceed little by little, or by degrees, to knowledge of the most complex. (4) Make enumerations so complete and reviews so general that one can be certain of omitting nothing.
~ An idea is perceived "clearly" if it is present and apparent to an attentive mind, and "distinctly" if it is perceived as so precise and different from all other objects that it contains nothing that is not perceived clearly.
~ "I think, therefore I am" ("I think, I am") is perceived as true every time a mind thinks.
~ The cause must be as perfect or more perfect than the effect.
~ God is the supremely perfect and consequently eternal and necessarily existent and creative substance.
~ Mind and matter are two clearly distinct created substances; the essence of matter is to be extended (in space), but the essence of mind is to be unextended and to think.
~ With the exception of the creative and sustaining power of God, no substance needs another in order to exist./
Descartes is frequently called the father of modern philosophy, and with good reason. He set the framework for the philosophical task for the modern period and gave that period its problems. he attended the Jesuit school La Flèche, and, with the exception of mathematics, was somewhat disappointed in his course of instruction. This is perhaps the reason that his own early interests seem to have been directed toward mathematics and physics. In 1618, Descartes went to Holland to serve in the army of Maurice of Nassau, which gave him the opportunity to travel around Europe. /
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