Philosophy and Science Flashcards
Metaphysics
Deals with the first principles of things, including abstract concepts such as being, knowing, identity, time, and space.
Concerned with the fundamental nature of reality.
Ontology
A branch of metaphysics concerned with the nature and relations of being.
The philosophical study of being in general, or of what applies neutrally to everything that is real.
Epistemology
The philosophical study of the nature, origins and limits of human knowledge.
Plato’s realm of eternal
Never changing ideal forms.
Plato’s method of knowledge
Rationalism - truth is based on thinking, not on info from the senses; humans have innate knowledge that can be recovered through deductive reasoning.
Inductive reasoning
A way of reasoning that starts from observations and tries to reach general conclusions on the basis of convergences of the observations.
Aristotle’s system of logic
Syllogism - argument consisting of 3 propositions:
1. major premise - men are mortal
2. minor premise - Aristotle is a man
3. conclusion - Aristotle is mortal
Aristotle
Knowledge less based on reason than with Plato; also room for observation.
Would become the most popular author in the Renaissance; initially led to some tensions with the Roman Catholic Church.
Alexander the Great
Great expansion and interaction with other cultures.
Knowledge became more mathematical and specialised.
Ancient Romans
Assimilated the Greek methods and knowledge.
Were more interested in technological advances than philosophy.
Byzantine Empire
Eastern part of the Roman Empire; capital Constantinople; lasted until 1453.
Preservation of the legacy of the Ancient Greeks.
Arab Empire
Founded on Islam; contained the Fertile Crescent.
Translation and extension of the Greek works.
Particularly strong in medicine.
Astronomy, mathematics and optics; occupied most of Spain.
Western Roman Empire
Largest decline in scientific knowledge.
Catholic church main preserver; not very science-oriented.
In Renaissance referred to as the Dark Ages.
Post-medieval developments
The establishment of (cathedral) schools and universities.
Increased mobility of scholars.
Discovery of the Ancient Greek and Arab texts.
Growing impact of Aristotle’s work.
Renaissance
Increased interest in and imitation of the Ancient Greek and Roman cultures.
Increased status of science and scientists.
Movement against the Roman Catholic Church.
Important for the development of science, because it emphasised the need for education, critical thinking, hard work and worldly success.
Book printing - rapid and massive availability of reliable info.
Colonisation of the world - need for technological and scientific innovations, discovery of new worlds.
Roger Bacon
Modes of knowing - by argument or by experience.
Limitation - no discussion of the procedures required.
Leonardo da Vinci
Importance of experience, the necessity of experimentation and the indispensable value of mathematics.
Limitations - no explicit defining of principles.
The scientific revolution
The need for an improved calendar renewed interest in the motions of the Earth, the Moon and the Sun relative to each other.
The model of the universe that was used was the geocentric model of Aristotle and Ptolemy. This model has the Earth at the centre of the universe.
Copernicus became interested in an alternative heliocentric model with the Sun at the centre.
He did not publish this model until the year of his death, partly because he thought the evidence was not convincing enough and partly because he did not want to upset the Roman Catholic Church.
Nearly a century later Galileo Galilei used a telescope to look at the night sky and observed several phenomena that were easier to explain on the basis of a heliocentric model than on the basis of a geocentric model.
In doing so, he upset the Roman Catholic Church. Because the evidence was so convincing and could be verified by others, the heliocentric model rapidly came to dominate astronomy despite the Roman Catholic Church’s resistance.
Galileo Galilei
Sensation vs physical qualities.
Quantify what is sensed and you can explain the elements of a phenomenon.
Method:
1. Intuition - examine sensible experiences, intuit constituent elements
2. Demonstration - use mathematics to deduce what had to be true
3. Experiment - verify predictions with experimentation.
Modern Science procedures that trace back to Galileo
- Differences in quality are replaced by quantitative variation which leads to exact measurement.
- The idea of experiment is emphasised and scientific instruments become important.
- The demonstration of homogeneity in nature and the assumption of a deterministic universe conforming to causal laws.
Descartes
Dualism - the philosophical position that behaviour is controlled by body and mind.
Laws of physics and mechanics that apply to objects must also apply to the body.
Human and animal bodies are machines.
Mechanistic view - everything in the material universe can be understood to be a complicated machine.
Discards the notion that things have goals and intentions.
Everything is designed to function independently so that God does not have to attend to it anymore.
Isaac Newton
Expected the universe to fall under the general principles of mechanical motion.
Explained, defined and described why planets orbit the Sun and moons orbit planets so that they can be precisely calculated.
Principia Mathematica
Book in which Newton presented his laws of physics (1687); considered to be the primary reason for the increased status of science.
Newton adequately describes all known movements in the Copernican universe based on three laws and the proposal of a gravitational force.
Laws of physics in the publication Principia Mathematica convinced scholars that science could uncover the mechanisms underlying the universe.
Factors contributing to the scientific revolution - Demographic changes
Growth of population.
Urbanisation.
Emergence of a large class of merchants.
Factors contributing to the scientific revolution - Absence of stifling pressure from religion or authority
Leadership indecision.
Protestant Reformation.
Passing of the day of judgement.
Church distinct from King; authority split.
Factors contributing to the scientific revolution - New inventions
Texts more available and in different languages.
Led to new questions, and included the promise of scientific discoveries leading to wealth and power.
Mechanical clock, compass, telescope and microscope.
Impact on war and trade - convinced ruling powers of the value of technological inventions.
Direct benefit to scientists - observe the previously unobservable.
Factors contributing to the scientific revolution - The existence of universities and patronage
Place to share and advance knowledge.
Increased accessibility.
Increased likelihood of investment in science.
Factors contributing to the scientific revolution - Massive enrichment from the Greek and Arab civilisations
Many more texts became available.
Alternative to Aristotelian view, strongly influence Descartes.
Fall of Constantinople, scholars fled to Italy.
Major breakthroughs happen when two main civilisations interact.
Factors that contributed to the scientific revolution - Natural philosophy became detached from the big philosophical questions
The idea that small issues can be solved without the need of an overall view that can explain everything in the universe.
The scientific revolution could have died prematurely if
A major disaster or war happened.
Religion had been able to supress the new thinking.
Natural philosophers had not been able to organise themselves and create structures that solidified their progress.
Francis Bacon
Replaced innate knowledge with knowledge based on observation and induction.
Importance of the interaction between observation and understanding. Neither alone provide progress.
Experimental history—method introduced by Bacon in which the natural philosopher extracts the truth from Nature by active manipulation and examining the consequences of the intervention.
William Jevons
Principles of Experimentation (published in1874).
The basis of inference; the recognition that what is true of something must be true of what is equivalent to it.
Inference can be done through simple observation, but experimentation goes further by influencing what is observed and forcing outcomes without waiting.
Remove all conditions thought to influence results, one at a time, while holding all others constant.
Look at one condition at a time.
