Chapters 3-4 - The Middle Ages & Renaissance Period Flashcards
supernatural understanding prior to renaissance
there was a return to supernatural understandings with the influence of Christianity
- those who challenged Christianity were seen as stupid or engaging in witchcraft
- mental illness seen as a ‘mystical experience’ (possession, witchcraft) and treatment involved coaxing, bloodletting, trepanation)
- ‘witches’ were often persecuted (scapegoated as cause of famine, plague, etc)
scholasticism
synthesis of Aristotle’s philosophy and Christian theology, more rational reasoning
- promoted studying them separately
- St Thomas Aquinas: god is the source of the light of natural reason and of faith
William of Occam
- we can trust the senses, it’s how we know what we’re experiencing, helped spark Renaissance
Occam’s razor: extraneous assumptions should be removed from explanations or arguments
- empiricists: we can trust our senses to know the world
- shifted questions about knowledge from metaphysical to psychological
Renaissance
went from god centered to human centered, and various fixed ‘truths’ were challenged:
- “earth is center of universe”
- “there are seven heavenly bodies in universe
- “humans are created in god’s image”
the renaissance: humanism and the 4 major themes
Humanism - intense interest in human beings, how do we think/behave/ feel?
1) individualism - human potential and achievement
2) personal religion - less formal and ritualistic, not as collective
3) intense interest in past - esp. ancient Greek philosophy
4) anti-Aristotelianism - like all humans, Aristotle is prone to error, many didn’t like that his philosophy was as authoritative as the bible
Nicolaus Copernicus
argued that the earth revolves around the sun (heliocentric theory)
- challenged the geocentrism of the church (that humans are center of universe, favored by God)
Giordano Bruno
argued for an infinite universe; stars are distant suns with their own planets and possible life; because sun is center of universe, what about other solar systems out there?
- convicted at heresy and burned at stake (his ideas were introduced too early, it challenged God too much)
Galileo
used newly invented telescope to discover that there were at least 11 figures in the universe (not 7)
- believed that senses offered hints about reality, which can only be explained mathematically
- said consciousness can never be studied empirically, because it exists outside of reality, we should not study them, they are inferior to the ‘real world’
Rene Descartes
- the father of modern philosophy
- said we can trust the senses because God is perfect and will not deceive humans
- believed that only humans have consciousness, free choice, and rationality (soul exists outside of body), which makes us different from animals
Rene Descartes: dualism and interactionism
dualism - the mind is separate from the body and immortal
interactionism (a type of dualism): the mind interacts with the body
- believed that the mind wills the body to act through the pineal gland
- pineal gland stimulates ‘animal spirits’ (cerebrospinal fluid) to activate different parts of the brain
- he described nerves as hollow tubes that connected sense receptors to brain, where there were animal spirits
asylums in renaissance period
asylums for confining the mentally ill and beggars/homeless
- converted from ‘leprosariums’
- viewed mentally ill as “defective” and that they needed to be kept away from others
- no standard treatment protocol, didn’t understand mental health problems
St. Mary Bethlehem Hospital AKA Bedlam
- called bedlam (used to describe chaos)
- horrible conditions; some chained, locked up, others ‘free to roam’, lack of bathrooms, nutrition
- become one of London’s biggest tourist attractions in the 18th century
- people paid money to watch patients, treated like animals
