Early Modern Epistemology

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Early Modern Epistemology

• Fall 2012
• Dr. David Frost
• Instructor of Philosophy
• University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point

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Overview of all (Western) History

• Homo Sapiens evolve to anatomical modernity
  200,000 years ago, and behavioral modernity
  50,000 years ago.
• Discovery of agriculture, domestication of
  animals and permanent human settlements 10,000
  years ago.
• Earliest proto-states in Egypt, Indus Valley and
  between Tigris and Euphrates (Mesopotamia) 6,000
  years ago.
• First Egyptian dynasty 3,000 B.C.

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Overview of all (Western) History

• Egypt
• Ancient Greece
• Roman Empire
• Middle Ages
• Renaissance
• Modernity
• Postmodernity

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Brief Review of Medieval Period

• The Dark Ages
• Rome fell
• Empire moved to the East leaving Europe to
  decline
• An ice age began in Europe
• Plagues spread in Europe

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Brief Review of Medieval Period

• Aquinas canonized Aristotle
• So to disagree with Aristotle was blasphemy.
• Knowledge-giving explanations of the day
  involved
• Teleology, purpose, first principles,
• Non-experimental, pre-scientific, scholastic
  thinking,
• Appeals to authority and Bible, which had real
  force.
• Philosophy was an orthodoxy was not an
  adventure.

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What Makes Renaissance New?

• Rediscovery of Greek and Roman classic texts
• After sack of Constantinople in 1453 by Muslims,
  Byzantine peoples moved west.
• Luthers Reformation
• Nails 95 theses to Church door in 1517
• An anti-corruption movement
• Leads to Thirty-Years War in 1618
• War-exhaustion led to pluralist secularism and
  relativism for the first time

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What Makes Renaissance New?

• Printing press, 1447
• Rise of middle class
• Progress in art
• Rise of Humanism
• The New Science

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What Makes Renaissance New?

• The New Science
• Comes with Bacon, Galileo, Descartes and later
  Newton
• Degrades experience
• Telescope, primary and secondary qualities
• Copernican system overturned geocentric system
• Arrived at new and different knowledge
• Parabolic flight versus impetus theory

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• Thank you