Philosophy and Science

Question 1

Metaphysics

Answer 1

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.

Question 2

Ontology

Answer 2

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.

Question 3

Epistemology

Answer 3

The philosophical study of the nature, origins and limits of human knowledge.

Question 4

Plato’s realm of eternal

Answer 4

Never changing ideal forms.

Question 5

Plato’s method of knowledge

Answer 5

Rationalism - truth is based on thinking, not on info from the senses; humans have innate knowledge that can be recovered through deductive reasoning.

Question 6

Inductive reasoning

Answer 6

A way of reasoning that starts from observations and tries to reach general conclusions on the basis of convergences of the observations.

Question 7

Aristotle’s system of logic

Answer 7

Syllogism - argument consisting of 3 propositions:
1. major premise - men are mortal
2. minor premise - Aristotle is a man
3. conclusion - Aristotle is mortal

Question 8

Aristotle

Answer 8

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.

Question 9

Alexander the Great

Answer 9

Great expansion and interaction with other cultures.
Knowledge became more mathematical and specialised.

Question 10

Ancient Romans

Answer 10

Assimilated the Greek methods and knowledge.
Were more interested in technological advances than philosophy.

Question 11

Byzantine Empire

Answer 11

Eastern part of the Roman Empire; capital Constantinople; lasted until 1453.
Preservation of the legacy of the Ancient Greeks.

Question 12

Arab Empire

Answer 12

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.

Question 13

Western Roman Empire

Answer 13

Largest decline in scientific knowledge.
Catholic church main preserver; not very science-oriented.
In Renaissance referred to as the Dark Ages.

Question 14

Post-medieval developments

Answer 14

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.

Question 15

Renaissance

Answer 15

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.

Question 16

Roger Bacon

Answer 16

Modes of knowing - by argument or by experience.
Limitation - no discussion of the procedures required.

Question 17

Leonardo da Vinci

Answer 17

Importance of experience, the necessity of experimentation and the indispensable value of mathematics.
Limitations - no explicit defining of principles.

Question 18

The scientific revolution

Answer 18

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.

Question 19

Galileo Galilei

Answer 19

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.

Question 20

Modern Science procedures that trace back to Galileo

Answer 20

1. Differences in quality are replaced by quantitative variation which leads to exact measurement.
2. The idea of experiment is emphasised and scientific instruments become important.
3. The demonstration of homogeneity in nature and the assumption of a deterministic universe conforming to causal laws.

Question 21

Descartes

Answer 21

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.

Question 22

Isaac Newton

Answer 22

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.

Question 23

Principia Mathematica

Answer 23

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.

Question 24

Factors contributing to the scientific revolution - Demographic changes

Answer 24

Growth of population.
Urbanisation.
Emergence of a large class of merchants.

Question 25

Factors contributing to the scientific revolution - Absence of stifling pressure from religion or authority

Answer 25

Leadership indecision.
Protestant Reformation.
Passing of the day of judgement.
Church distinct from King; authority split.

Question 26

Factors contributing to the scientific revolution - New inventions

Answer 26

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.

Question 27

Factors contributing to the scientific revolution - The existence of universities and patronage

Answer 27

Place to share and advance knowledge.
Increased accessibility.
Increased likelihood of investment in science.

Question 28

Factors contributing to the scientific revolution - Massive enrichment from the Greek and Arab civilisations

Answer 28

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.

Question 29

Factors that contributed to the scientific revolution - Natural philosophy became detached from the big philosophical questions

Answer 29

The idea that small issues can be solved without the need of an overall view that can explain everything in the universe.

Question 30

The scientific revolution could have died prematurely if

Answer 30

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.

Question 31

Francis Bacon

Answer 31

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.

Question 32

William Jevons

Answer 32

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.