Arts, Philosophy, Science

Philosophy: The Scientific Revolution

RENAISSANCE

Intro: Although the Renaissance was primarily an artistic and cultural movement, its emphasis on free thinking challenged the authority of religion, and paved the way for an unprecedented age of scientific discovery

Tradition undermined

THE Scientific Revolution began with the publication in 1543 of Nicolaus Copernicus’s De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres), which presented evidence contradicting the notion of a geocentric universe. A description of this is given at the end of this article.

That same year, Andreas Vesalius published De humani corporis fabrica (On the Fabric of the Human Body), which overturned many orthodox ideas in anatomy and medicine. What followed was a profound change in the approach to enquiry into the natural world. Conventional wisdom, including the dogma of the Church, was no longer blindly accepted, but challenged. Even the work of Aristotle, who had initiated the idea of natural philosophy based on methodical observation, was subject to scientific scrutiny.

At the forefront of this scientific revolution were philosophers such as Francis Bacon, whose Novum Organum (New Instrument) proposed a new method for the study of natural philosophy – systematically gathering evidence through observation, from which the laws of nature could be inferred. But there was also a new class of thinkers and scientists, including Nicolaus Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, and Galileo Galilei. Galileo challenged dogma more than most by proving that the Earth orbits the Sun, and fell foul of the Church for his efforts.

The discoveries made by these scientists, and the methods they used, laid the foundations for the work of Isaac Newton in the following century, and also influenced philosophers such as Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz, who helped to shape the ideas of the Age of Enlightenment.

One Cause Only

Central to Aristotle’s philosophy was the concept of the “four causes” (see article). The new scientific methods of the 16th and 17th centuries rejected these, especially the concept of a “final cause”, or purpose. Instead it was proposed that there are only “efficient causes” in nature – i.e. physical causal triggers. Although this is closer to the modern idea of cause and effect, the idea had first been proposed by the Atomists some 2,000 years earlier (see article).

Laws of nature

The theories of Copernicus and his contemporaries heralded a new era of scientific discovery. Religious authority was undermined, but so too was the orthodox concept of the laws that governed the universe, which were based on Aristotelean cosmology and physics. In this new atmosphere of scientific enquiry, conventional assumptions were replaced with laws of nature derived from empirical evidence of observation and experiment.  

The New Method

Induction

Bacon described a method of scientific enquiry using the process of induction, inferring a general rule from particular instances. For example, the rule that water boils at 100C can be inferred because this is the case in every instance.

Experimentation

Often, it is not enough simply to observe in order to come to a scientific conclusion. The scientific method pioneered by Islamic philosophers involves conducting controlled experiments to get reproducible results.

Galileo Galilei once said: “In science the authority of thousands of opinions is not worth as much as the reasoning of one individual.”

Sunspots – The detailed study of sunspots made by Galileo and others showed that these are inherent features of the Sun. These observations contradicted the Aristotelean idea of the perfection of objects in the heavenly spheres.

Gravity – Although it may only have been a thought experiment, Galileo dropped two balls of different weights from the Tower of Pisa to show that they fell at the same speed. This refuted Aristotle’s assertion that heavy objects fall faster than lighter ones.

Elliptical orbits – Once it was proven that the Earth orbits the Sun, the orbits of the planets could then be explained. Kepler discovered that the orbit of Mars was not circular, but an ellipse, and concluded that all the planets had elliptical orbits.

THE GEOCENTRIC UNIVERSE

Outside the orbit of the Moon lies the celestial region in which the Sun, the planets, and the stars move in orbits at various distances from the Earth. Unlike the sublunary region, the celestial region is made from an incorruptible substance, which Aristotle calls the “quintessence”, or fifth element. According to Aristotle, the natural movement of the earthly elements is up or down, towards or away from the centre of the Earth. By contrast, the natural movement of things in the celestial region is circular. What’s more, earthly elements tend towards a position of rest, while celestial movement is unceasing. Thus, Aristotle reasoned that the stationary Earth, although imperfect, is at the centre of the cosmos.

Beyond the Moon’s orbit, Aristotle identified 55 concentric spheres to which the celestial objects are attached. As they radiate away from the Earth, the outer spheres draw closer towards perfection, stretching into spiritual realms that have no material existence. The universe, for Aristotle, is a perfect form, and cannot have come into being at any one time: it is eternal, unchanging.

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Arts, Christianity, Culture

The Old Testament Book of Numbers

NUMBERS

OVER the next few weeks narratives from Scripture will be based on the Old Testament Book of Numbers. The Book overlaps with Leviticus and Deuteronomy with Moses and the Israelites the key people to be found in the text.  

For today, Numbers has significance in that God is supreme over all nations who defends his people. There is also the lesson that hardship is not a reason to question God but an opportunity to trust him.

REBELS WITHOUT A PAUSE

It might better have been called The Book of Warnings. On several occasions the fractious Israelites oppose Moses and complain. Even his brother and sister oppose him.

Each time the rebels are punished by a divinely-appointed event, reinforcing Moses’ authority and leadership. People are reminded that God is holy and just; it is a common theme that runs through Numbers. His holiness is demonstrated in the detailed instructions for religious rituals, stressing the need for God’s people to be pure and to deal with him carefully.

His justice and care for the Israelites is seen in the way in which he defends their cause against the Moabites in the strange tale of Balaam. The pagan priest’s curses are turned into divinely inspired blessings.

As we see from Numbers, the Israelites had expected to go straight from Egypt into Canaan, a journey taking a few weeks at the most. The Book tells the sad story of their refusal to trust God after the spies sent into Canaan brought back a report of “giants in the land”. As a result, they were sentenced to 40 years solitary confinement in the Sinai Desert until all who had left Egypt had died.

All, that is, except for Joshua and Caleb, the two scouts who produced a minority report saying that Canaan was accessible with God’s help. They eventually took the Israelites across the Jordon as the story continues in Deuteronomy and Joshua.

Numbers makes for sober reading. Any generation can embark on new projects with the same buoyant enthusiasm reflected in the first census which prepared the Israelites for conquest. But the temptation to begin to rely on human wisdom, to forget God’s absolute holiness and to neglect the spiritual disciplines, returns every time. Numbers is a clear warning not to make the same mistakes as the Israelites.

The censuses make sense

– A narrative on Numbers 1-4, 7, 26

NO ONE ever read the phone book for pleasure, and therefore the temptation to skip the lists in Numbers is strong. Yet, they serve a purpose and have a positive message for today.

The censuses were taken as a record of the Israelites’ military strength (1:3; 26:2). So they offer a picture of a united federation of 12 tribes preparing for combined operations.

Entry into Canaan was going to be costly; they would have to fight even though they saw the land as God’s gift. Unity and co-operation were essential for success.

They also give us a snapshot of the relative strengths of Israel’s tribes. Judah, for example, with 74,600 men over 20 years is more than twice the size of Manasseh with its 32,200. Later in Israel’s history we see intertribal conflict, and Judah (with the smaller Benjamin) eventually separating from the other ten.

The list of offerings for the Tent of Meeting (chapter 7) reads like an accountant’s stock list. But how exciting it is! Little Manasseh gives exactly the same to God’s “church” as mighty Judah!

The tribes are seen as equal before God. Judah cannot be closer or more valuable to God because it is bigger, and Manasseh can’t be of less value to God because it’s smaller. This is an exact parallel to Paul’s teaching about the body of Christ in 1 Corinthians 12:14-27.

This well-known and beautiful blessing can be found in Numbers 6:24-26:

“The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD turn his face towards you and give you peace.”

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Arts, History, Philosophy

Philosophy: On Reason and Experience

AGE OF REASON AND ENLIGHTENMENT

“Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.” – George Washington (1732–1799)

IN the eighteenth century, the Age of Reason – characterised by thinkers such as Descartes, Hobbes and Locke during the seventeenth century – brought about a seismic shift in emphasis in philosophical thought. Massive advances were made in the natural sciences and this in turn led to a questioning of old certainties and a rush of new and often competing ideas concerning everything from how knowledge and truth can be acquired and tested to the first seedlings of notions of democracy, representation and civil liberties. The floodgates opened, characterised best by Kant’s imperative in his essay “What is Enlightenment?” The human mind was emerging from the darkness of infancy and maturing like that of an enquiring child, while Kant urged people to “dare to know”. Reason and experience became the watchwords in this new philosophy, which was more concerned with how things actually are rather than how they could or possibly should be.

However, not all enlightenment was positive. There were darker consequences of this new awakening, as evidenced by the reign of terror following the French Revolution and by the work of possibly the most morose thinker of all time, Arthur Schopenhauer, who once wrote in an essay that everyone should swallow a live toad for breakfast to guarantee they wouldn’t have to experience anything else quite as dispiriting again for the rest of the day. It would also be a mistake to think that the status quo embraced the new enlightenment with open arms. The preface quote for this article is taken from George Washington’s farewell address to the American people and illustrates that although there was an explosion in free-thinking in some quarters, the old guard – the protectors of religious-based morality – were deeply suspicious and frightened of these new ideas about how to live in and view the world.

Reading the great thinkers of reason and experience shouldn’t be difficult. Most of what they had to say seems pretty self-evident today, obvious even, yet somehow their arguments can be difficult to follow. This is largely due to the intellectual zeal with which they approached their investigations and their fervent search for one over-arching, all-encompassing system of thought. It didn’t help either that this spirit of competitiveness led to petty rivalries. The German philosopher Schopenhauer had a hatred of Hegel bordering on the pathological. This drove him to take up a position at the University of Berlin, where Hegel had a seat, just to try and prove his ideas were more popular with the students (but he failed spectacularly). Nonetheless, readers should appreciate that the philosophers of the ages of reason and enlightenment represent a pivotal point in the history of philosophy.

“Truth in philosophy means that concept and external reality correspond… Genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights.” – Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)

HEGEL

Hegel was a major figure in German idealism. His historicist and idealist account of reality was revolutionary at the time and a major factor in the development of some radical threads of left-wing political thought.

Hegel was born on 27 August 1770, in Stuttgart, Germany. He studied philosophy and classics at Tubingen, and after graduation became a tutor and explored theology. Hegel taught at Heidelberg and Berlin, where he wrote and explored philosophical and theological concepts.

His major work, The Phenomenology of Spirit (or mind), was published in 1807 and his ideas developed in other deeply complex works until his death, from cholera, in 1831.

Almost everything that Hegel was to develop over the rest of his life is prefigured in the Phenomenology, but the work is far from systematic and generally accepted as difficult to read. The Phenomenology attempts to present human history, with all its revolutions, wars and scientific discoveries, as an idealistic self-development of an objective Spirit or Mind.

His mark on history has been profound, in that his influence has spread throughout both left- and right- wing political thought. In fact, the interpreters of Hegel split into “left” and “right” camps. Marx drew inspiration from Hegel by developing the idea that history and reality should be viewed dialectically and that the process of change – the struggle – should be seen as a transition from the fragmentary towards the complete. This is a skewed development of what Hegel tried to suggest in phenomenology. However, in practical terms it is likely that Hegel may have approved of Marx’s revolutionary interpretation, as he was witness at close hand to revolutionary Europe towards the end of the eighteenth century. It is even said that he celebrated Bastille Day every year.

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