The Age of Reason and Enlightenment

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The Age of Reason and Enlightenment
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Rationalism

• The belief that one can arrive at the truth by
  using ones reason rather than relying on
• authority of the past
• religious faith
• institutions

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Rationalism began in Europe

• with the great rationalist philosophers and
  scientists. Some of whom were
• 1543--Nicolas CopernicusRethinks our place in
  the solar system
• 1642-1727--Sir Isaac NewtonDiscovers the laws
  of gravity
• 1637--Rene DescartesI think therefore I am.
• 1632-1704 John Locke the right to Life,
  Liberty and Property

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Scientific Revolution Challenges Old Ideas

• During the Middle Ages, people and the Church
  thought that the Earth was the center of the
  universe

• They thought that God purposely placed the Earth
  at the center of the universe

• Nicolaus Copernicus changed this old view of the
  universe

• He figured out that the Sun is the center of the
  universe (heliocentric), and that the earth and
  all other planets revolve around the sun

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Hello, I am Copernicus. Why was my new idea a
problem?
If Copernicus is right The Church must be
wrong
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Did anyone Believe Copernicus?
My name is Galileo Galilei. I was fascinated by
the planets, just like Copernicus. I developed a
telescope, and saw that Copernicus was right!
Why is this a problem ?

• If the Church is proven wrong on this issue
  people might question all Church Teaching even
  the authority of the Church itself!
• (It was panic thinking)

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It is the year 1633 and the Italian scientist,
Galileo Galilei faces a life or death dilemma!
The Catholic court put him on trial because the
idea that the earth revolves around the sun was
dangerous to the Catholic Church!

• He had to either deny his ideas, or be put to
  death! If he denied the ideas of Copernicus, the
  church would punish him, but not put him to death.

• What do you think Galileo did? What would you do?

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Galileo Lies!

• Galileo said that he denies what Copernicus
  taught. In court, he stated

With sincere heart, I detest the errors of
Copernicus and every other error contrary to the
holy church.
Was Galileo lying or telling the truth?

• Galileo was not put to death, but he was never a
  free man again.

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Its interesting that
In 1992, Pope John Paul II officially
acknowledged that Galileo was right about the
earth revolving around the sun. The Pope
concluded that church leaders were wrong to put
Galileo on trial. The Pope also said that the
church at the time was acting in good faith and
was only working within the knowledge of their
own time.
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The Age of Reason emphasised

• reason over the imagination
• the social over the personal
• the common interest over the individual
• Reason is the dominating characteristic both of
  nature and human nature
• nature is governed by fixed, unchanging laws

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Age of Reason

• Growth of rational science
• Culture venerates rationality, consciousness
• Represents educated (white, male) mind as
• rational, scientific, critical, objective
• Others (women, non-white) represented as
• irrational, emotional, superstitious, corporeal
• Dualism is a basis of much Western thought

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Impact of the Age of Reasonon the Church

• It was the first widely-read, systematic attacks
  on concept of religion in the west
• Tension between faith reason
• Some ridiculed religion miracles
• Some saw religion as the root of all evil

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Religion and the Rational Mind

• DEISMGod makes it possible for all people at
  all times to discover natural laws through the
  God-given faculty of reason.
• Benjamin Franklin

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The deists

• The largest movement among philosophes
• Believed only those Christian doctrines which met
  the test of reason
• Denied miracles, Resurrection, original sin,
  divine revelation (Bible)

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The deists God

• God as great clockmaker
• Non-participatory after the Creation
• So no purpose to prayer!
• Christ as a great moral teacher
• But not the Son of God!

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Influence on Social thought

• The guiding principles
• Reason can find eternal laws governing human
  relationships.
• Injustice is the result of our ignorance of these
  laws.
• Utilitarianism
• Jeremy Bentham (d. 1832)
• The greatest good for the greatest number of
  people

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Rene Descartes

• Stay-in-Bed Scholar
• Gentleman, Soldier, and Mathematician
• Born on March 31, 1596
• Died on February 11, 1650

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Childhood

• As a child was very weak and was always sick.
• He had been picked on by bullies for it.
• He was inspired to do math by his mother.
• Little did he know he would be affected by not
  doing math as a child.

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Accomplishments

• He graduated from the University of Poitiers.
• He changed math by discovering the X and Y axis.
• He wrote the book SEEKING THE TRUTH IN THE
  SCIENCES. (1637)
• Descartes did not revise geometry he created it.

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Rene Descartes
I think, therefore, I am

• Descartes was a scientist, mathematician and
  philosopher

• He used a lot of logic in his findings

• He doubted everything in life, unless it was
  proven by reason

• The only thing he was sure of and that he felt he
  could prove, was his existence.

• He came up with a quote

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Rene Descartes (Cartesian Dualism)

• I think therefore I am
• Body and mind are separate
• body takes up space
• mind occupies no space
• Justifies other dualisms
• People vs. Nature
• Culture vs. Nature
• Mind vs. Body

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Descartes

• Venerates the rational mind
• vs. bodily urges
• Body and universe
• become a machine
• something to be mapped, explored, dissected by
  rational science

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Isaac Newton
Newton was another important scientist from the
scientific revolution.
I discovered the law of gravity!
This law said that all motion was controlled by
the same force.
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Isaac Newton

• 1642 to 1727
• Lived during the last European plagues, the
  Baroque period in music, and the beginning of the
  Age of Reason.
• Thinkers who came after saw Newtons Laws as a
  description of a Mechanical Universe.

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Newtons First Law of Motion

• An object in motion in a straight line at a
  constant speed (or at rest) stays in motion in a
  straight line and constant speed unless acted
  upon by an external force.
• Radical departure from previous ideas of
  Aristotle who believed objects moved because of
  their own natural tendencies

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Newtons Third Law

• The Karma of Physics
• For every action there is an equal and opposite
  reaction.
• The action/reaction pairs occur at a single
  point. (you feel something you push on with a
  force equal to your pushing.)

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Isaac Newton

• The great mathematician and physicist Sir Isaac
  Newton (1642-1727) discovered the law of
  gravitation and successfully explained the
  workings of the physical universe.
• But to the romantic artist William Blake this was
  not enough
• Newton had left out God as well as theemotional
  andspiritual elementsfrom his theories.
• William Blake
• Personification of Man
• Limited by Reason
• 1805

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The popularisation of science

• Newtons Principia hard to understand
• To understand scientific thought processes is to
  understand reason
• Popularisers made science accessible

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John Locke (1632-1704)
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Biography

• B. 1632, son of a small property-owner and lawyer
• Oxford, 1652-67
• Studied church-state issues, chemistry and
  medicine, new mechanical philosophy
• Involvement in politics through Lord Ashley, whom
  he treated for a liver abscess
• Plotted to assassinate King Charles II and his
  Catholic brother, later James II
• Exile in Holland, 1683-89
• 1689 3 major works published

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Major works and themes

• A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689)
• Argues for religious toleration
• Except for atheists, who deny the Being of a
  God and thus cannot be trusted to keep their
  promises (e.g. in contracts).
• Context
• - Religious wars and persecution in England
  (Test Acts) and on the Continent.

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Innate Ideas

• Philosophers such as Plato Descartes,
  maintained that we are born with some of the
  ideas which we have.
• For Plato, all of our ideas are innate, even
  though a certain amount of experience may be
  required to grasp them clearly.
• According to this theory we have innate ideas of
  such things as God, freedom, immortality,
  substance, and of some moral truths, eg. that
  deliberately harming an innocent person is wrong.
• Locke seriously disagreed with this.

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Lockes Basic Theory of Knowledge

• Human being tabula rasa (blank slate)
• receives sense-impressions
• some of these transformed by Mind into Ideas
• Ideas represented in language by words
• However, no Ideas are innate
• Mind operates (through gradual learning process)
  without reference to any received authority (of
  Church, State or others)

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Lockes Ideas

• Model of photographic-type images (ideas) left
  in the mind by sense-impressions
• primary qualities inherent in objects themselves
  (size, shape, number)
• secondary qualities those we assign (color,
  taste, sound) to sense-impressions, e.g.
  vibration produces sound however, the sound we
  hear is not the vibration itself, but its effect
  on our hearing apparatus.

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Complex Ideas

• Sense-data of primary qualities (PQs) and
  secondary qualities (SQs), produce ideas in the
  mind
• Ideas are mental results of sense-data
• Sense-perceptions
• Bodily sensations
• Mental images
• Thoughts and concepts

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Some basic info about Charles Darwin

• The following, on Darwin, is gleaned from a
  presentation by
• David Pannell
• University of Western Australia

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Lifeline

• Born 1809
• Study (Edinburgh and Cambridge) 1825-1831
• Voyage of the Beagle 1831-36
• Retired to Down 1842
• The Origin of Species 1859
• Died 1882

Darwins home at Down, near London
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Darwins achievements

• Transformed biological science
• Both style and content
• Still the cornerstone of biology
• Now the cutting edge of psychology
• Transformed attitudes of humanity to our place in
  the universe

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Not just an evolutionist

• Not even a biologist to start with
• Collected beetles for fun
• Studied geology more seriously
• Considered himself a geologist throughout the
  Beagle voyage and for some time after
• Famous for working out how coral atolls are formed

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His books (not just on evolution)

• Beagle voyage
• Coral reefs
• Volcanic islands
• Geology of South America
• Barnacles
• Species
• Man

• Emotions
• Climbing plants
• Domestication
• Cross and self fertilisation
• Orchids
• Worms
• Autobiography

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Contribution to style of science

• Pre-Darwin, science was done in homage to God
• Was primarily descriptive
• Deduction and theorising was disparaged as
  speculation
• Darwin used detailed observation to explore much
  larger questions - helped change scientific
  methods

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Natural selection

• Developed theory in complete isolation
• In face of violent opposition
• With no knowledge of genetics
• With no knowledge of DNA
• With no observations of natural selection
  actually occurring

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Not first to propose evolution

• French tradition
• Jean-Baptiste Lamark
• Etienne Geoffroy St Hilaire
• Erasmus Darwin (Grandfather)
• Robert Grant (Mentor)
• Was expounded in a popular book (Vestiges) 15
  years before Origin

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Darwin was mis-credited

• Died famous for evolution (which was not his
  idea)
• Natural selection not widely accepted, even among
  his supporters
• Darwin remained convinced
• Only 40-50 years later did scientists appreciate
  his foresight.

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The Beagle Only 90 foot long, but carrying 74
people.
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Joining the Beagle Voyage

• Not paid for 5 years on Beagle.
• Actually, he had to pay!
• Was lucky to get on
• replaced someone who was shot in a duel
• his father opposed him going
• Mainly asked because of his class, to keep
  Captain Fitzroy company
• It was the making of him

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Galapogos, 1835

• Portrayed as a Eureka experience.
• Actually, was hugely homesick
• Did not recognise significance until back in
  England, 1837.
• Worked out theory much later.
• First inkling of natural selection in 1838.
• Turtles finches were key evidence
• On boat home, ate turtles, dumped shells
• Thought finches different species didnt even
  label them properly

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The Beagle in Sydney Harbour
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Anguish

• Social class
• Respectability
• Evolution subversive - against his class
• Religious considerations
• especially worried about hurting wife Emma who
  grieved for his soul
• Scientific prejudice against speculation
• Like confessing a murder.

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Illness

• Sea sickness
• Problems throughout life
• violent shivering, vomiting, exhaustion,
  palpitations, hands trembling, head swimming,
  sleeplessness, headaches, flatulance, stomach
  problems, ringing of ears, fainting, copious
  palid urine
• In 1841 could work an hour or two a couple of
  days a week.
• Chagas disease or just nervous?

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Slow to publish Why so long?

• Anguish
• Illness
• Slow development of ideas
• Detailed analysis, collection of a wealth of
  evidence
• pigeons
• barnacles

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Barnacles

• Started out as a brief study.
• Took 8 years (from 1948).
• Huge 2 volume treatise overhauling entire
  sub-class.
• Dominated his kids lives
• One of his kids asked a friend, Where does your
  dad do his barnacles?
• Established him as a biological specialist, not
  just a geologist
• Royal Society Medal

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Courage

• On Beagle voyage, rode hundreds of miles through
  bandit areas and war zones in South America
• Worked through his illnesses.
• Was willing to publish Origins despite the
  risks

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Wealth

• Father a wealthy doctor
• Reduced his enthusiasm to get a job as a doctor
  or clergyman
• Wealth bought time and resources
• Made money from investments (land and railway
  stocks), not from books

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Religion

• Started out on path to clergy
• The Darwins had produced lawyers and military
  men, but Charles lacked the self-discipline.
  There was, however, a safety net to stop second
  sons becoming wastrels the Church of England. An
  aimless son with a penchant for field sports
  would fit in nicely. (Desmond Moore)
• Signed 39 articles of faith
• A naturalist parson?

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Religious conflict

• Samuel Wilberforce vs T.H.Huxley

• Religion did accommodate Darwin to some extent
• Many religious leaders not literalist
• Science served religion, so its findings were
  taken as revelations of Gods plan
• Buried in Westminster Abbey
• The Times The Abbey needed Darwin more than
  Darwin needed the Abbey.

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