Scientific & philosophical method

Scientific and philosophical method
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Intellectual revolution

	Seventeenth century scientists like Galileo saw themselves as innovators - pioneering new ideas and rejecting traditional Aristotelian beliefs.
	Knowledge requires both accurate observation and logical deduction - some theorists - empiricists - stressed the former; others - rationalists - stressed the latter.
	During the seventeenth century, empiricism became particularly strong in England, while rationalism was more dominant on the Continent.

Francis Bacon

	The first major English empiricist and the most important for the development of scientific methodology was Francis Bacon, Baron Verulam and Viscount St. Albans (1561-1626).
	Francis Bacon was a lawyer who became an important administrator and statesman. He became Attorney General in 1613 and Lord Chancellor in 1618. [Read a contemporary account of Bacon].
	Bacon was impeached by Parliament for financial corruption in 1621. He was pardoned by King James, but thereafter lived in retirement, writing and working on science.

The title page of Bacon's Instauratio magna (1620).
It shows a ship sailing through the Pillars of Hercules - two promontories at the Straits of Gibraltar that marked the limits of knowledge and exploration for the classical world. It represented Bacon's ambition to encourage the world to "…commence a total reconstruction of sciences, arts, and all human knowledge, raised upon the proper foundations."

	Bacon did not complete his ambitious project, finishing only two parts of it The Advancement of Learning (1605) - later expanded in a Latin edition called De augmentis scientiarum (1623) - and Novum Organum (1620).
	Bacon advocated observation and experiment as the foundation of all science.

… Bacon, like Moses, led us forth at last,
The barren wilderness he past,
Did on the very border stand
Of the blest promis'd land,
And from the mountain's top of his exalted wit,
Saw it himself, and shew'd us it.
But life did never to one man allow
Time to discover worlds, and conquer too;
Nor can so short a line sufficient be
To fathom the vast depths of Nature's sea:
The work he did we ought t' admire,
And were unjust if we should more require
From his few years, divided 'twixt th' excess
Of low affliction, and high happiness.
For who on things remote can fix his sight,
That's always in a triumph, or a fight? …

(Abraham Cowley, To the Royal Society)

Bacon's work was very influential in England, whose scientists consciously followed Bacon's recommendations and adopted the "Baconian Method" of induction from a large number of observations.

Faith, Reason & Reasoning

	Bacon wanted science to harness nature and improve people's lives. He wanted theology kept out of science - dogma was as useless in science as reason was in matters of faith. The idea that religion is ultimately based on pure faith (not reason or evidence) is known as fideism.
	Fideism became common amongst seventeenth century scientists - Blaise Pascal and Pierre Bayle, for example, adopted versions of it. Fideism conveniently allowed them to remain Christians whilst ignoring the scientific nonsense in the Bible.

All men are mortal. [Major premise]
Socrates is a man. [Minor premise]
Therefore, Socrates is mortal. [Conclusion]

The classic syllogism

Aristotelian philosophy was based on the syllogism - it reached answers by deduction from established axioms.

1. Observe crows and note their color.
2. Hypothesize - "crows are black"
3. Test hypothesis by looking for crows that are not black.

The inductive method

Bacon argued that deduction could not lead to new discoveries - only apply existing knowledge to problems. Bacon argued that the acquisition of new knowledge should proceed by induction. First, collect data by observation; then draw a general conclusion from that data; finally, test the conclusion by making new observations.

Bacon distrusted theorizing in advance of observation, and attacked teleology (i.e. explaining phenomena by pointing to their end result). He was less enthusiastic about mathematics than most seventeenth century scientists, since, of course, mathematics is deductive not inductive. (It is not repeated observation that establishes 2+2=4 ).
Francis Bacon made no important scientific discoveries, and indeed was far from the cutting edge of seventeenth-century science. Nonetheless, he was immensely important to the advance of the scientific and intellectual revolution in England.

Descartes and Cartesianism

René Descartes (1596-1650) was the founder of modern philosophy.

Educated by Jesuits, Descartes was a soldier for a few years, serving in the Dutch and Bavarian armies from 1617 to 1621. He traveled and lived for a while in Paris before moving to Holland in 1628. For the next twenty years, he lived there comfortably on the fortune bequeathed by his father. He moved in 1649 to Sweden and was promptly killed by an infection of the lungs.

Unlike Bacon, Descartes did not like to dabble with experiments. He liked to stay in bed late, and claimed that that he had some of his best ideas in dreams or sitting beside the fire. He thought that reason was far more important than observation in reaching the truth.

Mechanical philosophy

	Descartes believed that all objects act in accordance with regular laws. Even light (which he thought made up of small particles) acts in accordance with the laws of motion that govern solid objects.
	Descartes wanted to reduce all explanations to clear, simple principles. He rejected the "occult powers" beloved of classical thinkers. Cartesians even rejected Newton's theory of gravity because it seemed to involve action at a distance (i.e. one object influencing the motion of another without coming into contact with it).
	Like Galileo, Descartes held that only shape, size, weight and motion can genuinely be attributed to objects themselves. The secondary qualities perceived by the senses (color, taste, smell) are subjective reactions, not real attributes.
	The Cartesian universe follows simple, inexorable rules - like a mechanical toy. The human heart is just a pump, for example, and animals are merely biological automata. Ordinary people fail to notice this, because the designer of the universe (God) has disguised his handiwork so beautifully.
	Descartes argued for the conservation of motion. At creation, God had injected a certain amount of motion into the universe and this total quantity of motion had been conserved ever since.
	Descartes also pronounced that a vacuum was impossible: Motion is transmitted from one object to another by contact, and there are no empty spaces between. What seems to us empty space is merely extremely extended, fine matter.
	Cartesian ideas were seen as atheistic by some people because they portrayed the physical world as a machine working automatically without divine intervention or regulation. Descartes responded that God not only created the world, but sustains it by imposing the laws of nature.

Cartesian dualism

"Cogito ergo sum"

(I think therefore I am)

	Descartes thought that human bodies (like animals and inanimate objects) also obeyed the universal laws of nature. However, he radically distinguished the human mind from the body.
	The mind thinks, chooses and remembers. The mind is also aware of itself. Descartes argued that no matter what we doubt, we can't doubt our own existence; consciousness entails being.
	Descartes thought that our own existence was "a clear and distinct idea" that we simply could not meaningfully reject. He built his philosophy on the basis of ideas so obvious and undeniable that they could not really be questioned.
	Descartes left the exact relationship between mind and body rather unclear. The movement of all matter is predetermined and yet minds have free will.

Minds seem to control bodies, yet Descartes never said just how. He argued that the soul (mind) was in the pineal gland (a tiny organ in the stem of the brain), but his followers abandoned this notion.

A later idea suggested by some Cartesians was occasionalism. This said that a person's decision to act merely gave God the occasion to produce all the results that normally result from such a decision. Only God actually causes anything to happen, but its coincidence with my decision makes me think that I made it happen. Occasionalism not only seemed to destroy free will, it was also inherently implausible to most people.

Descartes raised and tackled all the most difficult problems of epistemology, existence and mind. His answers to these questions have been widely disputed, but he established the terms of reference for modern philosophical debate.

"Ça, mon âme, il faut partir"

The last words of Descartes ("So my soul, it is time to part").