Key Terms / Ideas: Astronomy - This is the study of the heavens, so don't confuse this with zodiacs and that whole business. Celestial Heavens - This is the idea that anything above the moon is perpetual; it will always be permanent. Aristotelian and Scholastics - people who are heavily influenced by Aristotle. Which can be summed up as Aristotle + Bible = two main books and sources of knowledge. Sub-Lunar - The idea that nothing is constant, this is the world below the moon and so on, eventually concluding that God is constant and that the world below the celestial heavens is 'cursed'.
Aristotelians all tried to find a model of the earth that fits with the ideas of Aristotle: Ptolemy came up with the idea that the Earth is in fact the centre of the universe; He argued that the Moon, Sun, Planets and Stars all revolve and will never change.
Francis Bacon: Bacon states that things such as university never changed - it was merely a system of training clergy men and so on. Bacon was in such an institute and despised this - he violently turned on the Scholastics and Aristotelian approach and called their ideas barren and circular.
Bacon also claimed that the mixing of religion and science was a recipe for disaster because people are constantly trying to change the world - he wanted to break away from these somewhat outdated beliefs and other knowledge from the past that he deemed useless.
Bacon also claimed that the mixing of religion and science was a recipe for disaster because people are constantly trying to change the world - he wanted to break away from these somewhat outdated beliefs and other knowledge from the past that he deemed useless.
Francis Bacon and the New Organon: The Organon was the collective name of all of Aristotle's work. This 'New Organon' had 4 key themes.
1) Knowledge is the source of human power, so we must harness and navigate through all knowledge.
2) There must be a clear separation of science and religion, as mixing if caused too many problems in the past.
3) The idea "new knowledge" must be thought up from scratch - these ideas or general theories must be then tested to see if they can prove them, or more accurately in later years "falsify" them.
4) Science is dynamic - you must always admit to failure when you encounter it as opposed to the archaic way of never admitting defeat or failure, this is the way that you learn.
The Scientific Method: This is the idea that you must always start a new theory from scratch - you must protect yourself from ideas from the past that might influence your ideas - it has to be original basically.
Locke and Human Understanding: Locke believes that natural understanding comes from experience, as we know he also rejected the idea of innate knowledge. He believes that we are all born blank slates, we need experience to help us discover who we are, and furthermore, he believes that God has given us reason so that we can then understand what we are seeing.
The Heliocentric Model, Copernicus and Galileo: The Sun = Centre of the Universe. A 16th century polish man called Copernicus wanted to make a calendar.This idea of his was suppressed and offered to the world as a model of how you can calculate it, this is however not a true picture of reality.
Kepler heavily influenced Galileo and they managed to prefect the Dutch invention - the telescope. For the first time ever this allowed people to actually observe the heavens, this sort of this was un-dreamed of by previous generations - it was a true revelation. The telescope brought with it the power of observation and when you link this with mathematical proof gives you the idea of precedent over presumptive authority. For example, the scholastic system says that the moon is completely smooth, but with the telescope we now know that there in fact creators and mounds upon the moon’s surface and that Jupiter also had its own moons. Galileo attacked Aristotle and his ideas, mostly his distinction between primary and secondary qualities:
Kepler heavily influenced Galileo and they managed to prefect the Dutch invention - the telescope. For the first time ever this allowed people to actually observe the heavens, this sort of this was un-dreamed of by previous generations - it was a true revelation. The telescope brought with it the power of observation and when you link this with mathematical proof gives you the idea of precedent over presumptive authority. For example, the scholastic system says that the moon is completely smooth, but with the telescope we now know that there in fact creators and mounds upon the moon’s surface and that Jupiter also had its own moons. Galileo attacked Aristotle and his ideas, mostly his distinction between primary and secondary qualities:
Primary = real and quantitative (things like shape, mass, measurable things and so on)
Secondary = placed on all Aristotelian qualities, we're not real in the object it all depends on perception
Isaac Newton: Newton published the book "Principia" in 1687 and it was a mathematical demonstration of what came beforehand (people such as Keplar and Copernicus). Newton convinced people that the world was ordered and knowable - this is when he first mentioned "The Clockwork Universe"
After Newton, Aristotle’s physics is discredited and the whole of his system of thought were undermined, all thanks to the ideas put forward by Newton and the people after him. This is arguably the advent of the Enlightenment - which is the dominance of science until it is destroyed by Einstein in the 20th Century.
After Newton, Aristotle’s physics is discredited and the whole of his system of thought were undermined, all thanks to the ideas put forward by Newton and the people after him. This is arguably the advent of the Enlightenment - which is the dominance of science until it is destroyed by Einstein in the 20th Century.
Phew! What a hell of a long blog post, anyway that’s my "summary" of the philosophy lecture on the clockwork universe.
Bye and stuff, thanks for stopping by, stay classy x
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