Science, Tradition, and the Science of Tradition

1989 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-173
Author(s):  
Joseph Mali
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Natural Science ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Institutional Changes ◽  
Religious Controversy ◽  
Intellectual Origins ◽  
Modes Of Thought

The ArgumentScience consists in progress by innovation. Scientists, however, are committed to all kinds of traditions that persist or recur in society regardless of intellectual and institutional changes. Merton's thesis about the origins of the scientific revolution in seventeenth-century England offers a sociohistorical confirmation of this revisionist view: the emergence of a highly rational scientific method out of the religious-ethical sentiments of the English Puritans implies that scientific knowledge does indeed grow out of – and not really against – customary modes of thought.In tracing the intellectual origins of this view back to the religious controversy between Protestants and Catholics, the essay demonstrates that the essential conflict between them with regard to natural science stemmed from their antagonistic conceptions of tradition and its function in the production of genuine knowledge – of religious as well as of natural affairs. Whereas the Protestants believed only in those truths that are immediately revealed by God to each man through his reason, the Catholics adhered to truths that are related to men or “made” by them through culture and history.

History of Science and Medicine

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Staffan Müller-Wille
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Medical Sciences ◽  
Growth Of Knowledge ◽  
History Of ◽  
Research Agendas ◽  
Ways Of Thinking ◽  
The Relationship

This article explores what both historians of medicine and historians of science could gain from a stronger entanglement of their respective research agendas. It first gives a cursory outline of the history of the relationship between science and medicine since the scientific revolution in the seventeenth century. Medicine can very well be seen as a domain that was highly productive of scientific knowledge, yet in ways that do not fit very well with the historiographic framework that dominated the history of science. Furthermore, the article discusses two alternative historiographical approaches that offer ways of thinking about the growth of knowledge that fit well with the cumulative and translational patterns that characterize the development of the medical sciences, and also provide an understanding of concepts such as ‘health’ and ‘life’.

scholarly journals Perkembangan Eksperimen Fisika Ditinjau dari Filsafat Sains

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-20
Author(s):  
Ike Festiana
Keyword(s):  
Quantum Mechanics ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
Quantum Physics ◽  
Experimental Methods ◽  
Independent Experiment ◽  
Classical Physics ◽  
Scientific Issue ◽  
World Development

Scientific knowledge as well as experiment keeps on growing every day.  Experiments flourished in the seventeenth century. Previously, information about world development was obtained by connecting the roles of prominent epistemology. Experimentation is defined as a planned program for restoring hypotheses by providing empirical evidence to people. Science is a process of seeking the truth. Activities in finding the truth involves a series of scientific method including experiment. The development of physics history is divided into five periods. Period one is indicated by the absence of systematic and independent experiment. In period two, experimental methods had been accountable, and well accepted as a scientific issue. In period three, (investigations developed more rapidly when classical physics development began to be foundation of current famous quantum physics). Period four which is called The Old Quantum Mechanics is indicated by the invention of microscopic phenomena. Period five is well known by the emergence of new quantum mechanics theory.

Scientific method

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary Hatfield
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Communication Technology ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
Instrument Making ◽  
Scientific Methods ◽  
Careful Observation ◽  
Body Of Knowledge

Procedures for attaining scientific knowledge are known as scientific methods. These methods include formulating theories and testing them against observation or experiment. Ancient and medieval thinkers called any systematic body of knowledge a ‘science’, and their methods were aimed at knowledge in general. According to the most common model for scientific knowledge, formulated by Aristotle, induction yields universal propositions from which all knowledge in a field can be deduced. This model was refined by medieval and early modern thinkers, and further developed in the nineteenth century by Whewell and Mill. As Kuhn observed, idealized accounts of scientific method must be distinguished from descriptions of what scientists actually do. The methods of careful observation and experiment have been in use from antiquity, but became more widespread after the seventeenth century. Developments in instrument making, in mathematics and statistics, in terminology, and in communication technology have altered the methods and the results of science.

Medieval Latin Aristotle Commentaries Authors A-F

Traditio ◽  
1967 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 313-413 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles H. Lohr
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Natural Science ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Medieval Latin ◽  
History Of ◽  
Classical Civilization ◽  
The Middle Ages

The history of Latin Aristotelianism reaches roughly from Boethius to Galileo — from the end of classical civilization to the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century. Whereas the early Middle Ages knew only a part of Aristotle's logic, the whole Aristotelian corpus became known in the period around 1200. From the middle of the thirteenth century to the end of the Middle Ages, and in some circles even beyond, the influence of these works was decisive both for the system of education and for the development of philosophy and natural science.

scholarly journals Science and Knowledge

2016 ◽  
Vol 71 (02) ◽  
pp. 321-335
Author(s):  
Roger Chartier
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Indigenous Knowledge ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Review Article ◽  
Western Science ◽  
Traditional Definition ◽  
Histoire Des Sciences ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Clear Line

This review article poses three questions, essentially based on the first two volumes of Histoire des sciences et des savoirs, a collective undertaking edited by Dominique Pestre. First, it considers the relationships between “science” and “knowledge.” Can a clear line be drawn between them? Or should “scientific” knowledge (with or without quotation marks) be considered a particular class of knowledge? And, if this is the case, must we define it according to a certain number of specific operations? Second, the article turns to the acceptance, criticism, or rejection of the traditional definition of the “scientific revolution,” dated to the seventeenth century and characterized by the mathematization of nature and the introduction of experimental practices. Should this be replaced by other perspectives, highlighting previous reconfigurations of fields of knowledge or the plurality of “revolutions”? Finally, the article considers the attention paid to connected histories of knowledge, which move away from Eurocentricism and introduce new actors. Recognizing these circulations does not however efface the asymmetry of exchanges, the stigmatization of indigenous knowledge, or the imperialistic imposition of Western science.

scholarly journals Theological and Epistemological Principles of Ancient Natural Science

2020 ◽  
pp. 1317-1337
Author(s):  
Natalia P. Koptseva ◽  
Ksenia V. Reznikova
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Natural Science ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
Nicomachean Ethics ◽  
Full Coverage ◽  
Medical Treatises ◽  
Universal Standard

The article discusses methodology of ancient natural science based on the analysis of the fragment 29cd from Plato’s “Timaeus” and Comments on this fragment, which were written by Proclus Dyadochus. Particular focus is on the Plato’s views on science as “plausible myth”, “probable narration”, εἰκότα μῦθον. The authors also consider the concept of διάνοια, “dianoetic virtue” in the “Nicomachean Ethics” by Aristotle and Aquinas’ Comments on fragments of the“Nicomachean Ethics” where “dianoetic virtues” are examined. Scientific and medical treatises of the great ancient physician Claudius Galen are defined in this article as universal standard of scientific knowledge. The second chapter of the Galen’s Treatise “Περι των Іπποκράτογς και Πλατωνος δογματων” is seen in more detail so that the main constituents of the Galen’s scientific method get a full coverage

Light of Reason, Light of Nature. Catholic and Protestant Metaphors of Scientific Knowledge

1989 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
William B. Ashworth
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Title Page ◽  
Direct Study ◽  
Important Development ◽  
Relative Status ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Natural Philosophers

The ArgumentMany of the epistemological issues that occupied natural philosophers of the seventeenth century were expressed visually in title-page engravings. One of those issues concerned the relative status to be accorded to evidence of the senses, as compared to knowledge gained by faith or reason. In title-page illustrations, the various arguments were often waged by a series of light metaphors: the Light of Reason, the Light of Nature, and the Lights of Sense, Scripture, and Grace. When such illustrations are examined with the authors' theological views in mind, it becomes apparent that in the first half of the seventeenth century, Catholic authors favored the Light of Reason as a source of truth, while Protestant authors favored the Light of Nature. Since by the end of the century it was widely accepted by scientists of all religious persuasions that certain knowledge must be grounded in sense evidence and the direct study of nature, one might argue that in this instance Protestantism was responsible for nurturing an important development of the Scientific Revolution. However, the skewed nature of the sample (the Catholics who used light metaphors were mostly Jesuits; the Protestants who did so mostly alchemists) and the large number of counterexamples available (many Catholic scientists believed in the ascendancy of the senses but failed to engage in metaphorical warfare) mitigate against taking this offshoot of the Merton thesis too seriously.

Language Matters: ‘Counsel’ in Early Modern and Modern Medicine

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Sabroe ◽  
Phil Withington
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Modern Medicine ◽  
Francis Bacon ◽  
Social Worlds ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
Successful Scientist

Francis Bacon is famous today as one of the founding fathers of the so-called ‘scientific revolution’ of the seventeenth century. Although not an especially successful scientist himself, he was nevertheless the most eloquent and influential spokesperson for an approach to knowledge that promised to transform human understanding of both humanity and its relationship with the natural and social worlds. The central features of this approach, as they emerged in Bacon’s own writings and the work of his protégés and associates after 1605, are equally well known. They include the importance of experiment, observation, and a sceptical attitude towards inherited wisdom (from the ‘ancients’ in general and Aristotle in particular).

« ET VIDI COELUM NOVUM ET TERRAM NOVAM »

Nuncius ◽  
1986 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 49-77
Author(s):  
MAURIZIO TORRINI
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Traditional Knowledge ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Single Access ◽  
New Science ◽  
Modern Thought ◽  
Formal School ◽  
Made In ◽  
School Boundaries

Abstract<title> SUMMARY </title>Contemporary movements, united by their common rejection of traditional knowledge and by their common beginnings and development outside formal school boundaries, libertinism and the new science are often considered, evaluated and classified in the univocal light of modern thought introduced by Descartes. A comparison totally unfavourable to libertinism which did not benefit from the attempt made in some cases to assimilate it to the scientific revolution in the name of a common anti-dogmatic character. The movements were in fact distinct in their aims and motives and their occasional interaction must not make us forget the contemporary presence of different and often contrasting ideas at the dawn of modern thought. The aim of this paper is to overcome the historiographical approach which, by privileging a single access to modern thought, evaluates all the others according to the same measure.The paper, through an examination of the European discussion stimulated by Galileo's Sidereus nuncius, shows the philosophical consequences of the astronomical revolution and the series of projects, hopes and misunderstandings that marked its course. An event that did not encounter the indifference of libertines like Naude, who read in the celestial revolution confirmation of the crisis of terrestrial knowledge. In Italy the bond between libertine thought and the scientific revolution came tragically into being as from the condemnation of Galileo and found its consecration in the Neapolitan trial of the atheists at the end of the seventeenth century, thus reuniting in the name of a single orthodoxy, two different conceptions of nature and knowledge.

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