Lecture Introducing Modern Philosophy
For PHH 2063
Copyright ©
2015 Bruce W. Hauptli
The dividing of our history or culture into “periods” is,
of course, arbitrary and subject to (much) disagreement.
Nevertheless, the following “rough-and-ready” classification is widely
adhered to in the histories of Western philosophy.
1. The
Pre-Philosophical Period (prior to 600 B.C.E.):
According to C.M. Bowra, in their “Archaic Period”
the Greeks expressed their most
significant speculations in poetry, and even when this was reinforced by
sculpture and painting, their outlook was still largely shaped by their poetical
education and the principles which it implied.
Even if the traditional myths left much unexplained, and even
contradicted each other on important matters, they provided an approach to
experience, a way of thinking in concrete images, which satisfied a people who
had no reason to doubt that the gods were at work everywhere and that a
knowledge of them explained most phenomena, both physical and mental.[1]
2. The Ancient
Greek and Roman Periods (600 B.C.E.-400 C.E.).
We are now somewhat familiar with this period, and I will not say more on
this topic.
3. The Medieval
Period (400-1400):[2]
The best way to understand the medieval period is by
adopting the metaphor contained in the title of Arthur Lovejoy’s
The Great Chain of Being.[3]
This world-view emphasized a static, traditional picture of the universe
and of our place in it. The
universe was viewed as a rational whole.
There was a complete agreement of
faith and reason. This view
emphasized talk of heavenly spheres, relied upon Aristotelian science and logic,
relied upon feudal social conditions, and had could easily countenance the
uniqueness condition entailed by the phrase “The
Church.” Each individual knew
his/her place—sons and daughters did not have to worry about what their future
career would be!
In short, this world-view offered a teleological conception of the
universe where value and fact infused one another.
The medieval conception of nature was largely Aristotelian.
As Michael Matthews says,
central to Aristotle’s thought is
his concept of nature. This was
essentialistic and teleological.[4]
Nature was not just matter moving around as a result of random pushes
and pulls (materialism), nor was it an unintelligible and imperfect
shadow of some other perfect realm (Platonism).
Nature was differentiated into various species and objects, all of
them had their own internal and essential
dynamic for change....Their alteration was the progressive, teleological
actualization of a preexisting potential.
The universe was finite, closed, everything had its own preordained
purpose.
In appropriate circumstances, the acorn would develop through an
internally generated process of natural change.
Likewise, when not interfered with, heavy objects would naturally move
to their natural place at the centre of the earth.
Science was largely concerned with the understanding of these natural
changes in the world. The
contrasting violent or chance changes were of little interest to philosophers,
as they did not reveal anything of the object’s nature.[5]
Think of the difference between having the
growth of an acorn and the
falling of a ball-bearing as your
scientific model and you can come to a better understanding of the contrast
between the Aristotelian and Medieval world-views, on the one hand, and the
modern world view, on the other. As
Basil Willey points out, this conception of nature led to views of science and
motion which are unfamiliar to us today:
St. Thomas [Aquinas], following
Aristotle, treats motion as a branch of metaphysics; he is interested in
why it happens, not how.
He discusses it in terms of ‘act’ and ‘potency’, quoting Aristotle’s
definition of it as ‘the act of that which is in potentiality, as such.’
Motion exists, then because things in a state of potentiality seek to
actualize themselves, or because they seek the place or direction which is
proper to them....To every body in respect of its ‘form’, is ‘due’ a ‘proper
place’, towards which it tends to move in a straight line.[6]
It is unnecessary to controvert
theories of this kind as if they were ‘untrue’.
Their ‘truth’ is not of the empirical kind; it consists in their being
consistent with a certain world-view.[7]
We will have more to say about this period when we turn to
St. Anselm in several weeks. For
now, however, we will focus our attention upon the ensuing period.
4. The Renaissance
and Modern Periods (1400-1750):
This period marks the beginning of the development of
modern science, the “discovery” (and appropriation) of the “new” world, and the
development of the modern nation state.
An example of the “new” orientation in science is provided by Galileo
Galilei (1564-1642). He was a
medical student who turned to the study of mathematics and became a Professor of
the subject at the Universities of Pisa and Padua, then became the Court
Mathematician to the Duke of Tuscany in Florence.
His studies in mathematics, physics, and especially in astronomy led him
to publish his Starry Messenger in
1610—among other things it discussed the observations he had made regarding the
moons of Jupiter. His publication
of Two World Systems in 1632 led to
his arrest and a trial by the Inquisition in 1633.
He was sentenced to indefinite imprisonment.
In 1758 the Church dropped its prohibition on books advocating the
heliocentric view. In 1992 Pope
John Paul II said:
thanks to his intuition as a
brilliant physicist and by relying on different arguments, Galileo, who
practically invented the experimental method, understood why only the sun could
function as the center of the world, as it as then known, that is to say, as a
planetary system. The error of the
theologians of the time, when they maintained the centrality of the Earth, was
to think that our understanding of the physical world’s structure was, in some
way, imposed by the literal sense of Sacred Scripture….[8]
In a letter to the Grand Duchess Christina Medici in 1615,
Galileo says:
…I think that in discussion of
physical problems we ought to begin not from the authority of scriptural
passages, but from sense-experiences and necessary demonstrations; for the holy
Bible and the phenomena of nature proceed alike from the divine Word, the former
as the dictate of the Holy Ghost and the latter as the observant executrix of
God’s commands. It is necessary for
the Bible, in order to be accommodated to the understanding of every man, to
speak many things which appear to differ from the absolute truth so far as the
bare meaning of the words is concerned.
But Nature, on the other hand, is inexorable and immutable; she never
transgresses the laws imposed upon her, or cares a whit whether her abstruse
reasons and methods of operation are understandable to men.[9]
Whereas the theology professors at the University of Padua,
for example might have refused to look through Galileo’s telescope at the
moons of Jupiter because they knew
it could not have any (that would conflict with theological premises), Galileo
looked—the difference here is the
presence or absence of an empirical spirit![10]
As Willey points out:
Galileo typifies the direction of
modern interests, in this instance, not in refuting St. Thomas, but in taking no
notice of him. Motion might
be all that the angelic doctor had
declared it to be; Galileo nevertheless will drop weights from the top of a
tower, and down inclined planes, to see how they behave.
It is undeniable that the scholastic theory of motion informs us nothing
of the manner in which bodies move in space and time, and this was precisely
what Galileo wished to determine.
He is concerned with quantities, not qualities; and his energy is thus devoted
not to framing theories consistent with a rational scheme, but to
measuring the speed of falling bodies
in terms of time and space.[11]
In the scholastic doctrine of the
heavenly bodies we have an illustration of the strange fact that a belief can be
metaphysically ‘true’ (in the sense of ‘coherent’ or ‘consistent’) and yet
empirically false, that is, not in correspondence with what we call a ‘state of
affairs’. The received scholastic
doctrine, for instance, taught that the heavenly bodies are unalterable and
incorruptible. This belief seems to
have rested on the assumption (fact, as it then appeared) that the motions of
the heavenly bodies were circular.[12]
Thus the metaphysical theory of
the heavens is confronted by comets, new stars, and sun-spots seen through the
telescope; and Salviatus, speaking for Galileo himself, makes much of an alleged
saying of Aristotle that we ought to prefer sense-evidence to logic.[13]
Galileo admitted that he knew
nothing about the ultimate nature of the forces he was measuring; nothing about
the cause of gravitation, or the origin of the Universe; he deemed it better,
rather than to speculate on such high matters, ‘to pronounce that wise,
ingenious and modest sentence, “I know it not”.[14]
Whereas theologians at Padua
could have refused to look through Galileo’s telescope at the satellites of
Jupiter because they knew it could not have any (that would conflict with
theological premises), Galileo looked—the difference here is the
presence or absence of an empirical spirit!
Of course, the theologians of Padua had the authority of the Bible to
rest upon—and geocentrism is deeply
entrenched in the Biblical view: on the
first day, according to it the deity created the Earth, and it was not until
day four that the sun, moon, and
other stars were created.[15]
Clearly, defenders of geocentrism contend, the Earth can not be said to
circle something whose existence is subsequent to its own existence.
Today’s internet has many sites which defend geocentrism.
For example, Gerardus D. Bouw maintains that:
to hear tell, geocentrism, the ancient doctrine that the earth is fixed
motionless at the center of the universe, died over four centuries ago.
At that time Nicolaus Copernicus…a
Polish canon who dabbled in astrology, claimed that the sun and not the earth
was at the center of the universe. His
idea is known as heliocentrism. It
took a hundred years for heliocentrism to become the dominant opinion, and it
did so with a complete lack of evidence in its favor.[16]
Following a venerable and old
tradition, Bouw maintains that:
the strongest geocentric verse in the Bible is Joshua 10:13:
And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged
themselves upon their enemies. Is
not this written in the book of Jasher?
So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hastened not to go
down about a whole day.
Here the Moderator of Scripture, the Holy Ghost Himself, endorses the daily
movement of the sun and moon. After
all, God could just as well have written: “and the earth stopped turning, so
that the sun appeared to stand still, and the moon seemed to stay….”
The wording would be no more “confusing” the reader than anything in Job
chapters 38 through 41….
….The Copernican Revolution, as this
change of view is called, was not just a revolution in astronomy, but it also
spread into politics and theology.
In particular, it set the stage for the development of Bible criticism.
After all, if God cannot be taken literally when He writes of “the rising
of the sun,” then how can He be taken literally in writing of “the rising of the
Son?”[17]
There is much that is similar between the Greek and Roman Periods, on the
one hand, and the Modern one on the other.
To get at this commonality, ask yourself:
“What is being “rediscovered” (or
re-born) in the Renaissance?”
Plato was our representative thinker for the Ancient and
Roman Periods, and Thomas Hobbes will be one of two representative thinkers for
the Modern Period—the other will be Rene Descartes, and we will be dealing with
him at the end of the course.
5. Further Periods:
Some would maintain that there are periods after the modern
one, but I will leave this issue largely untouched.
According to some, the “Late Modern Philosophy”) extends from Kant
(1724-1804), through Hegel (1779-1831), Mill (1806-1873), Darwin (1809-1882),
Kierkegaard (1813-1885), Marx (1818-1883), Nietzsche (1844-1900), and into the
current century. Some contend,
however, that we live in the Post-Modern period.
This is another story—and any understanding of what post-modernism “is”
would require some understanding of modernism anyway.
[1] C.M.
Bowra,
The Greek Experience (N.Y.: Mentor, 1957),
p. 177.
[2] This
includes the Medieval Renaissance (1100-1300):
where there was translation of Greek texts
(Euclid, Ptolemy, Aristotle); study of
Aristotle’s methods of observation, experiment,
and logical reasoning; and work to reconcile
faith and the new forms of reasoning.
Aquinas (1226-1274) was especially
concerned with the latter.
William of Ockham (1300-1349) denied
Aquinas’ project because religious claims must
be taken only on faith—he rejected Medieval
metaphysics and contended that non-revealed
claims must be based on experience.
[3]
Cf.,
Arthur Lovejoy,
The Great
Chain of Being (Cambridge: Harvard U.P.,
1936).
[4]
Teleological explanations occur when past
and present events are explained in terms of
future
events (they are “goal-oriented” explanations).
They are often contrasted with
mechanical explanations which hold that
present and future events are to be explained in
terms of
past mechanical events and their
consequences. The contrast is well-stated by
Wilber Long in his entry under “teleology” in
Dictionary of Philosophy, ed. Dagobert Runes
(N.Y.: Philosophical Library, 1960), p. 315.
[5] Michael
Matthews,
The Scientific Background to Modern Philosophy
(Indianapolis: Hackett, 1989), p. 6—emphasis is
mine.
[6] Basil
Willey,
The Seventeenth Century Background (New
York: Columbia U.P., 1967), p. 16.
[7] Ibid., p.
17.
[8] John Paul
II, remarks at
L’Osservatore Romano, November 4, 1992.
[9] Galileo
Galilei, “Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina”
[1615], trans. Stillman Drake, in
The
Philosophy of the 16th and 17th
Centuries, ed. Richard H. Popkin (New York:
Free Press, 1966), p. 62.
[10] In the
Wikipedia article “Galileo Affair,” there is a
citation of a letter he wrote to Kepler in 1610
complaining that some that some university
professors opposed his account but refused to
look through the telescope.
Cf.,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair
(accessed 05/29/14).
[11] Basil
Willey,
The Seventeenth Century Background, op. cit.,
p. 17.
[12]
Ibid.,
p. 19.
[13]
Ibid.,
p. 20.
[14] Ibid.,
p. 21.
[15] The
Bible, Genesis I, 1-20.
[16] Gerardus
Bouw, “Why Geocentricity?”,
http://www.geocentricity.com/geocentricity/whygeo.html,
last modified May 7, 2001, and accessed on May
5, 2011.
[17]
Ibid.
File revised on 02/20/2015.