What are the four idols of Bacon?
Date: 
11-02-2019

The idols of Bacon are problematic ideas
The four of them are:

  • Idol of the Tribe
    Everything that all humans possess that distort objective observation
  • Idol of the Cave
    Someone's personal idols. These are the things that distort the objective observation
  • Idol of the Market Place
    A wrong choice of words hinders understanding
  • Idol of the Theatre
    'Knowledge' and ideas that came into people's minds by Dogma's and wrong laws of demonstration. Things that are believed because of authority.

 

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Supporting content
Historical and conceptual issues in psychology, by Brysbaert, M and Rastle, K (second edition) - a summary

Historical and conceptual issues in psychology, by Brysbaert, M and Rastle, K (second edition) - a summary

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This is a summary of the book: Historical and conceptual issues in psychology, by Brysbaert, M and Rastle, K. This book is about the history of Psychology and how now-day psychology came to be. The book is used in the course 'Foundations of psychology' at the second year of psychology at the University of Amsterdam.

The scientific revolution of the seventeenth century and its aftermath - summary of chapter 2 of Historical and conceptual issues in psychology, by Brysbaert, M and Rastle, K (second edition)

The scientific revolution of the seventeenth century and its aftermath - summary of chapter 2 of Historical and conceptual issues in psychology, by Brysbaert, M and Rastle, K (second edition)

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Foundation of Psychology
Chapter 2
The scientific revolution of the seventeenth century and its aftermath

Introduction

The word psychology did not appear in literature before 1500.
Scientific revolution: name given to a series of discoveries in the seventeenth century, involving Galilei, Descartes and Newton, that enhanced the status of science in society.


From a geocentric to a heliocentric model of the universe

The geocentric model of the universe in the sixteenth century

The earth as the centre of the universe

The model that of the universe used in the sixteenth century was the model described by Aristotle who built on others) and elaborated by Ptolemy.
Aristotle’s universe was a limited universe with the Earth in the middle
Geocentric model: model of the universe in which the Earth is at the centre; was dominant until the seventeenth century.

The addition of epicycles

A key problem within the Aristotelian universe was the movements of some of the wandering stars.
To explain strange movements, Ptolemy used the notion of ‘epicycles’.
Epicycles: small cycles made by the wandering stars in addition to their main orbit around the earth.

Copernicus’s alternative heliocentric model

The sun at the centre of the universe

Aristotle’s model was not the only one that had been proposed in ancient cultures.
Heliocentric model: model of the universe in which the sun is at the centre.
Copernicus saw the heliocentric model as a valid alternative for the geocentric model.

Why Copernicus waited to publish his model

Only shortly before his death, Copernicus was persuaded to get his book printed.
Possible reasons

  • He was afraid of the reaction of the Roman Catholic church
  • Copernicus did not feel the evidence for his model was strong enough to justify publication.

Galilei uses a telescope

Because of the many problems with Copernicus’s model, it failed to have much impact.

Galilei’s observations

Galilei built a telescope and found out that:

  • There were many more stars than were visible to the naked eye
  • The surface of the moon was not smooth, as claimed by Aristotle, but comprised of mountains and craters.
  • Jupiter had four orbiting moons, so that the Earth’s moon was not longer the only heavenly body failing to turn around the centre of the universe.
  • The sizes of Mars and Venus appeared to increase and decrease in cycles, suggesting that their distances to the Earth changed over time. In addition, Venus had phases just like the moon.

Response of the Roman Catholic church

On the basis of this evidence Galilei started to argue in letters that Copernicus’s heliocentric model was much more likely than Ptolemy’s geocentric model.
This resulted in an investigation of the church, after which Galilei received a private warning to stop defending Copernicus’s model.
In 1632 Galilei published a book in which one of the characters defended the geocentric model, and the church gave him house arrest for the rest of his life.

Independent of the Church’s reaction, the main outcome of Galilei’s research was that the evidence he presented was so convincing that the heliocentric view rapidly came to dominate astronomy.

Interim summary

  • The need for an improved calendar renewed interest in the motions of the Earth, the Moon and the Sun relative to one another.
  • The model of the universe that was used was the geocentric model of Aristotle and Ptolemy. This model has the Earth at the centre of the universe.
  • Copernicus became interested in an alternative heliocentric model with the Sun at the centre. He did not publish this model until the year of this death, partly because he thought the evidence was not convincing enough and partly because he did not want to upset the Roman Catholic church.
  • Nearly a century later Galileo Galilei used a telescope to look at the night sky and observed several phenomena that were easier to explain on the basis of a heliocentric model than on the basis of a geocentric model. In doing so, he upset the Roman Catholic church.
  • Because the evidence was so convincing and could be verified by others, the heliocentric model rapidly came to dominate astronomy despite the Roman Catholic church’s resistance.

Mechanisation of the world view

Descartes’ philosophy of man

Dualism

Descartes identified the soul as being divine and independent of everything else.

  • Because the human soul was define, human thoughts and feelings could not be studied by the natural sciences and fell under the remit of philosophy and religion.
  • Descartes was convinced that the soul had innate knowledge, which could be recovered on the basis of reasoning.

Dualism: view of mind-body relation according to which the mind is immaterial and completely independent of the body; central with religions and also in Descartes’ philosophy.

Mechanistic view of the universe, including the human body

Descartes viewed the universe and all matter in it (including the human body) as one big, sophisticated machine that could be studied by humans.
Mechanistic view: world view according to which everything in the material universe can be understood as a complicated machine; discards the notion that things have goals and intentions as assumed by the animistic view; identified by Descartes.
This was important for the development of science.

Implications for the advancement of science

  • The mechanistic view of the world invite scrutiny of workings
  • Because of questions about the interactions of the body and soul, the soul got dragged into the mechanical part of the universe and became subject to natural investigations.

Interim summary

  • The response of the Roman Catholic church to Galilei encouraged René Descartes to build a new philosophy of man
  • In this philosophy a clear distinction was made between the soul, which was define and could not be studied with scientific methods, and the rest of the universe (including the human body), which was a complex machine that could be studied scientifically. This became known as (Cartesian) dualism.
  • The mechanistic view of the world came to replace Aristotle’s view, which still contained animistic elements

The formulation of the first laws of physics

Why is the Earth orbiting the sun?

Movements as result of forces

Newton had the insight that objects attract each other.
But, because of differences in mass, the pulling force varies.

In his book Prilosophiae naturalis principia mathematica, Newton described all known movements in the Copernican universe on the basis of three laws and the postulation of a gravitational force.
Each of these components was described in mathematical terms.

Interim summary

  • Newton explained why planets orbit the Sun and moons orbit planets
  • In doing so, he not only defined the relevant forces, but described them in such detail that they could be calculated precisely
  • The resulting mathematical equations were the first laws of physics, published in the Principia mathematica, convincing scholars that science could uncover the mechanisms underlying the universe

What set off the scientific revolution in seventeenth-century Europe?

Factors that contributed to the scientific revolution

Demographic changes

Europe’s population nearly halved in the fourteenth century as result of the Great Famine, the Hundred years war, and the black death.
At the end of the fifteenth century a new growth began.
Around the same time, the feudal system came to an end, which depleted aristocracy.
Cities grew and installed more democratic regimes.

There was an emergence of a large group of merchants that formed a link between the hand workers and the intellectual elite.

Absence of stifling pressure from religion or authority

There were problems in the Catholic church

  • Two popes held office simultaneously
  • Martin Luther started the Reformation
  • Judgment day did not come in the year 1000 or 1033 (thousand years after Jesus’s death)

As a result, the actions of the Roman Catholic church against Galilei were limited in their impact.

The church made a strict distinction between the worldly and the heavenly.
This resulted in two different authorities.

New inventions

  • Book printing
    • Made information abundantly available
    • Relieved scholars from the burden of preserving the information from the previous generation
    • Information became available in vernacular, important texts were translated into different languages.
  • The mechanical clock
    • Provided philosophers with a working example of a mechanical world
    • Established of a professional group of clock- and watchmakers, who could made the high-precision equipment needed for the scientific experiments that were to come
  • The compass, telescope and microscope

The existence of universities and patronage

Universities provided a place for natural philosophers in society and conveyed the message that the pursuit of knowledge about nature was a worthwhile in its own right.
This increased the chances of patronage by wealthy families or even the involvement of those families in the expansion of science.

Massive enrichment from the Greek an Arab civilisations

In the sixteenth century, many more texts became available than those of Plato and Aristotle.

  • One of the factors contributing to the increased access to Greek writings was the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and the subsequent flight of Greek scholars to Italy.

Major breakthroughs happen (or can happen) when two main civilisations interact.
This creates a fluidity and dynamism in which new ideas can grow.

Natural philosophy became detached from the big philosophical questions

Gradually, natural philosophers felt allowed to study a phenomenon without prior knowledge about the totality of things (like man’s place in the universe)

Factors that helped the fledgling science grow

  • The absence of disaster
  • A benevolent religion
  • The establishment of learned societies

Interim summary

The following factors are thought to have precipitated the scientific revolution in seventeenth-century Europe

  • The growth of the population, urbanisation, and the emergence of a considerable class of merchants
  • A crisis in religion
  • New inventions that made information more easily available, that led to new questions, and that included the promise of scientific discoveries leading to wealth and power
  • The existence of universities and patronage
  • Massive enrichment from the Greek and Arab civilisations
  • The idea that small issues could be solved without the need of an overall view that explained everything in the universe

The scientific revolution could also have died prematurely if:

  • A major disaster or war had happened
  • Religion had been able to suppress the new thinking
  • Natural philosophers had not been able to organise themselves and create structures that solidified their process

The new method of the natural philosopher

The scientific revolution could not take place unless something fundamental changed in the way scholars approached knowledge-gathering.

Francis Bacon and the importance of the interaction between perception and reason

Traditionally, science was associated with knowledge that depended on reasoning.

The new organon

In 1620 Bacon published a book ‘New organon’, in which he described the new view of science, as opposed to Aristotle’s approach.

  • Bacon started by claiming that neither perception nor reasoning alone provides progress.
    Interaction between both is required.
    Weaknesses perception
    • It tends to be biased by people’s convictions
    • People do not observe everything correctly
    • Even when observations are veridical they do not result in useful knowledge unless they are accompanied by reasoning and understanding
  • To overcome the deficiencies of observations, Bacon recommended putting them on a firmer basis by tougher coupling between observation and reason

Bacon argued that natural philosophers should experiment to see which changes worked and which not, without bothering about the implications for the totality of the universe.
But, natural philosophers should go beyond the experiments mechanics set up to solve practical problems.
Experimenta frutifera (fruit-bearing experiments): solve practical problems
Experimenta lucifera (light-bringing experiments):determine true causes.
They should additionally use clarifying experiments to determine the true causes of phenomena.

  • Ultimately, observations and clarifying experiments must result in deeper understanding.

Natural philosophers must go from particulars (works) to axioms, which in turn will lead to new particulars.
The existence of axioms also allows natural philosophers to purposely search for new phenomena, rather than having to rely on chance findings.

Sometimes an observation or a clarifying experiment may even decide between two alternative explanations. These are crucial instances.

The link between particulars and axioms must be closer than in Aristotle’s view.
To achieve this, Bacon recommend working with a hierarchy of axioms, starting with lesser axioms (close to the observation), going over to middle axioms, to the highest axioms (general and abstract).

Inductive versus deductive reasoning

Deductive reasoning: form of reasoning in which one starts from a number of indisputable premises, from which new, true conclusions can be drawn it the rules of logic are followed.
Because this requires indisputable premises to start with, it usually defends some form of innate knowledge.

Inductive reasoning: form of reasoning in which one starts from observations and tries to reach general conclusions on the basis of convergences in the observations.
This is needed in science to turn observed phenomena into scientific laws, but does not guarantee that the conclusions are true.

Experimental histories to extract the truth from nature

Bacon did not simply argue that deductive knowledge should be replaced by inductive knowledge.
He was well aware of the limitations of perception and inductive reasoning.
Rather, he proposed a much closer coupling between perception and axiom, in which observations are used to formulate and evaluate axioms, and in which axioms were used to guide perception.

Experimental history: method introduced by Bacon in which the natural philosopher extracts the truth from nature by active manipulation and examining the consequences of the intervention.

Are scientific theories always observation-based?

Although Bacon’s writings had a great impact on the development of natural philosophy, to some extent they underestimated the importance of reasoning beyond observation in scientific research.

Knowledge is to be discovered and not to be retrieved from antiquity

In the scientific revolution, there was a growing awareness that a lot of knowledge was still to be discovered.
Gradually, natural philosophers started to realise that the ancient civilisations did not know everything and that some of their knowledge was plainly wrong.

Because of the revision of the past, for a natural philosopher the truth of statements could no longer be based on the authority of history and tradition.

Interim summary

The method of the natural philosopher

  • In particular, the writings of Francis Bacon were important in making the new method of the natural philosopher explicit
  • Bacon’s advice comprised the following elements
    • Observation and inductive reasoning are much more important in science than acknowledged by Aristotle
    • Systematic observation is important to have a good understanding of the phenomena and to come to correct axioms; it is also important to spot evidence against the prevailing axioms and convictions
    • Because of the limitations of observations, they must be supplemented by experimental histories to extract the truth from nature (rather than passively observe nature); observation and understanding must constantly interact
  • Bacon’s view was able to explain quite well the developments that resulted in the scientific revolution, but the emphasis on observation and experimental histories did not explain the ways in which Galilei and Newton sometimes did came to their conclusions
  • Another major change was that natural philosophers started to realise that not all knowledge had been known in ancient times and that much still remained to be discovered

Changes in societies as a result of the scientific revolution

The impact of science on daily life

Science and prosperity

Although the practical implications of natural philosophy remained very limited in the first 200 years after Bacon’s writings, by the nineteenth century the new thinking started to alter everyday life.
Industrial revolution: name to refer to the socio-economic and cultural changes in the nineteenth century caused by the invention of machines; involved, among other things, the replacement of the labour of peasants and craftsmen by mass production in factories and the resulting massive relocation from the countryside to the towns.

Science and specialisation

Scientific advances led to

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