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Early Modern Epistemology

Early Modern Epistemology. Fall 2012 Dr. David Frost Instructor of Philosophy University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point. The Early Modern Period. “Modernity” signals a time of extraordinary change.

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Early Modern Epistemology

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  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. • There’s modernity in art, architecture, philosophy, music, literature and intellectual history generally. • Very roughly, let’s 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 God’s 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. Galileo’s 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 Aristotle’s 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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