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Early Modern Epistemology

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Title: Early Modern Epistemology


1
Early Modern Epistemology
  • Fall 2012
  • Dr. David Frost
  • Instructor of Philosophy
  • University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point

2
The Early Modern Period
  • Modernity signals a time of extraordinary
    change.
  • Theres modernity in art, architecture,
    philosophy, music, literature and intellectual
    history generally.
  • Very roughly, lets start our thinking circa 1600
    for Modernity.
  • Scientific Revolution, Reformation and
    Post-Reformation, and Enlightenment.

3
Luther Nails up 95 Theses in 1517
  • Expressed grievances against the Catholic Church,
    the entirety of the Christian tradition at the
    time.
  • Challenged authority
  • The Reformation and the separation of the Church
    eventually made Relativism possible, different
    equal perspectives.

4
Copernicus New Cosmology
  • St. Thomas Aquinas had mixed Aristotle and
    Christianity together so certain Aristotelian
    ideas were canon and to deny them was blasphemy.
  • Geocentricism had put us at the center of Gods
    creation, matched the data, and was a priori --
    known without experiment.
  • No difference then between scientific and
    religious views of the world as there is today.

5
Copernicus New Cosmology
  • Copernicus decentered us.
  • Kepler showed not perfect circles but ellipses.
    Galileos telescope showed imperfect surfaces on
    the planets, moons.
  • We became one among many planets and not the
    center of anything. It is hard to imagine the
    devastation this had on the psyche and the
    cultural zeitgeist. See Donne and Shakespeare.

6
Aristotelianism vs. Mechanism
  • Hylomorphism was Aristotles metaphysics of
    objects and perception thereof.
  • Matter and Form (or essence).
  • Forms transferred their essence to the mind
    directly, whereas according to the New Science
    appearances were different than reality.
  • No emphasis on experimentation, explanation was
    deductive.

7
Aristotelianism vs. Mechanism
  • According to the hylomorphic tradition, all
    sensible qualities, such as colors, heat and
    odors, involve the transmission of a form to the
    human sensory equipment. Sensory properties were
    considered real things, not merely the effects of
    particles acting on sensory organs So when I see
    a red wall, the quality of red -- a form of its
    own -- is received by my senses, and alters the
    matter that constitutes the eye, forcing me to
    see red One of the insights of early modern
    empiricism was that sense perception occurs, not
    by transmission of forms but by the mechanical
    impact of invisible particles, (Carlin, The
    Empiricists, 2009, p.10).

8
Aristotelianism vs. Mechanism
  • Explanatory framework of the Four Causes
  • Material, Formal, Efficient, and Final Causes
  • The universe had been teleological (purposeful)
    but now became mechanistic.
  • Teleological explanation seemed occult and
    unexplanatory.

9
Aristotelianism vs. Mechanism
  • Aristotle held that objects had their natural
    place. Earth had its natural place down at the
    center of the earth. Fire had its natural place
    above.
  • Also Aristotelians took the heavens to be of a
    different nature than the sublunar (down here)
    realm.
  • Does motion need explanation? Aristotle said yes.
    Hobbes and Galileo said no.

10
  • Thank you
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