Philosophical Background to the Modern World - Timothy R. Quigley

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Galileo moved to Florence in 1610 where he became "Chief Mathematician and Philosopher" inthe court of the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Meanwhile, the publication of Galileo's observationsduring the Inquisition and his support of the Copernican view proved controversial. While therewere some supporters among the clergy, the level of tension and sensitivity was high and theChurch's authority was under increasing attack. To complicate matters, Galileo was activelycampaigning for and publicizing his views. He even went to Rome in 1615 to argue withtheologians and to defend his scientific principles. The result was that the opposition hardened,publication of his book was suspended, and he was told not to teach these new theories unless hestated clearly that they were merely speculations and false ones at that.In 1632, after publishing Dialogue on the Two Principle Systems of the World, which had apreface stating he was not advocating the heretical views contained in the work, Galileo had toface the Inquisition a second time. His own sympathies were hardly concealed in the text,however, as he positioned the character named "Simplicio" as the chief advocate of thetraditional (and weak) Aristotelian view. Now he was called back to face the Inquisition a secondtime, threatened with torture, and forced to renounce on his knees the heliocentric view. He musthave felt lucky to escape with his life given that many other "heretics" of the day were oftenexecuted for contradicting received doctrines.In 1638 Galileo published Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences. In this work, the generalassumption ("rationale") underlying the behavior of material objects was taken to be geometric.Since geometry is a deductive science, Galileo was clearly suggesting that, in principle at least,physics must also be an exact science.The Methodological LegacyWhat was the scientific legacy of this rich period of discovery? At least three principles emergedfrom it:1. To advance scientific knowledge, one must experiment rather than appeal to authority.2. One should proceed cautiously and adopt a healthy skepticism – it's better to be ignorantthan wrong.3. Scientific explanation arises from the coordination of reason, quantification, andobservation.There was also an emphasis on that which is observable and measurable. Thus, primaryqualities (extension, figure, motion) are taken to be more real than secondary qualities (color,sound, etc.), which are nothing more than subjective appearances. Galileo put the matter in thefollowing way:Now, whenever I conceive of any material or corporeal substance, I am necessarilyconstrained to conceive of that substance as bounded and as possessing this or that shape, aslarge or small in relationship to some other body, as in this or that place during this or thattime, as in motion or at rest, as in contact or not in contact with some other body, as being one,many, or few – and by no stretch of imagination can I conceive of any corporeal body apartPage 10 of 12 | 17thCentBkrnd.doc
from these conditions. But I do not at all feel myself compelled to conceive of bodies asnecessarily conjoined with such further conditions as being red or white, bitter or sweet,having sound or being mute, or possessing a pleasant or unpleasant fragrance. On the contrary,were they not escorted by our physical senses, perhaps neither reason nor understanding wouldever, by themselves, arrive at such notions. I think, therefore, that these tastes, odors, colors,etc., so far as their objective existence is concerned, are nothing but mere names for somethingwhich resides exclusively in our sensitive body (corpo sensitivo), so that if the perceivingcreatures were removed, all of these qualities would be annihilated and abolished fromexistence. But just because we have given special names to these qualities, different from thenames we have given to the primary and real properties, we are tempted into believing that theformer really and truly exist as well as the latter. 7Typical of the "new scientist" was the view that physical reality is characterized by matter inmotion. The behavior of matter conforms to simple mathematical laws. Thus, a mechanistic andquantitative view of nature must replace the teleological and qualitative view.This new approach to the understanding of nature also raised the issue of free will anddeterminism, as well as questions about the relation and priority of phenomenal experience(appearance) and objective relations (reality), leading to a re-emergence of dualism as one wayof reconciling materialism with Christian doctrine.III. Mysticism, Platonism, and the Great Chain of BeingIn addition to the developments in applied mathematics and scientific experimentation during theRenaissance, the revival of Pythagoreanism and Platonism in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuriesalso stimulated an interest in various forms of mysticism and the occult sciences (astrology,numerology, alchemy, etc.) To separate these elements from the scientific concepts and practicesof the time would be to ignore an important aspect of late medieval and renaissance thinkingabout human experience, the natural world, and their place in the "Great Chain of Being". 8The case of mathematics is of special importance because of the significance of quantificationin the rise of modern science, but the occult or mystical influence of late Hellenisticphilosophy had a much deeper impact on sixteenth-century thought than this alone. Implicit inneo-Platonism and the Christian traditions was the belief in a unity of nature, a unity thatencompassed God and the angels at the one extreme and man and the terrestrial world at theother. Along with this was a continued belief in the truth of the macrocosm-microcosmrelationship, the belief that man was created in the image of the great world, and that realcorrespondences do exist between man and the macrocosm. 9Neo-Platonism also emphasized beauty, order and the importance of the sun as the source oflight, nutrition, and life on earth. Such views contributed to a "climate of opinion" in which itwas quite natural to think of the universe as based on mathematical relations, and to conceive of7 Galileo, The Assayer (1623), in Michael R. Matthews (ed.), The Scientific Background to Modern Philosophy: SelectedReadings, Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett, 1989, 56f.8 Debus, op. cit., 11-15.9 Ibid., 12.Page 11 of 12 | 17thCentBkrnd.doc
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Philosophical Background to the Modern World - Timothy R. Quigley

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