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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The Early Modern Period

• Modernity signals a time of extraordinary
  change.
• Theres modernity in art, architecture,
  philosophy, music, literature and intellectual
  history generally.
• Very roughly, lets start our thinking circa 1600
  for Modernity.
• Scientific Revolution, Reformation and
  Post-Reformation, and Enlightenment.

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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.

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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 Gods
  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.

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Copernicus New Cosmology

• Copernicus decentered us.
• Kepler showed not perfect circles but ellipses.
  Galileos 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.

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Aristotelianism vs. Mechanism

• Hylomorphism was Aristotles 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.

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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).

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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.

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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.

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• Thank you