Atomic Connections

2020 ◽  
pp. 157-161
Author(s):  
Demetris Nicolaides
Keyword(s):  
Modern Science ◽  
Significant Trend ◽  
Great Intensity ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Medieval Europe

Epicureanism has served as an intellectual bridge between ancient and modern science. Lucretius, a devoted Epicurean, composed a didactic poem about Epicurean philosophy that has “taken over the whole of Italy.” Epicureanism “was a significant trend in Hellenistic times.” “The echoes of this battle [between the atomists and their critics, e.g., the Aristotelians] were heard [sporadically] in medieval Europe, and it flared up again with great intensity in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.” Then, Epicureanism was revived when a copy of Lucretius’s poem resurfaced, inspiring various Renaissance philosophers, who had inspired the Enlightenment philosophers. Galileo cited Lucretius’s work to compare the Epicurean physics of falling bodies with Aristotle’s and his own. His book inspired Newton, an atomist himself, who in turn inspired Einstein, who had proven atomism theoretically, and who inspired everyone after him. Rightly then, “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.”

Architectural Criticism, Science, and Visual Eloquence: Teofilo Gallaccini in Seventeenth-Century Siena

1999 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 146-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alina A. Payne
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Modern Theory ◽  
Architectural Theory ◽  
Visual Artists ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Science And Engineering ◽  
Architectural Discourse ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Textual Culture

This article examines the transition from a mimetic conception of architecture as proposed by the great treatise writers of the Renaissance, to the modern, science- and engineering-oriented one that began to supplant it in the eighteenth century. The focus of the investigation is the textual culture of Italian Baroque theory and its vehicle, the till now largely unknown corpus of the Sienese scientist Teofilo Gallaccini. It is argued that alongside the traditional path of architectural theory produced by architects, which evolved in the grooves set in the Vitruvian Renaissance, there existed a parallel path driven by scientists. Absorbing the imitatio practices of visual artists into their own inquiries, scientists provided other outlets for their use and in so doing also provided other directions for architectural discourse. By locating Gallaccini's work in the scientific and architectural culture of his own time, and by exploring its appeal to exponents of the Enlightenment who held widely divergent views on the means of achieving architectural reform, this article argues that-far from proceeding by watersheds and paradigm revolutions, as modernist history writing has held-modern theory owes much to both the scientific and mimetic approaches that not only co-existed but also intertwined in the Baroque.

The Quest for the Historical Essence of Ernst Troeltsch

1994 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 295-307
Author(s):  
Trevor Hogan
Keyword(s):  
Modern Science ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Christian Community ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Democratic Polity ◽  
Cultural Implications ◽  
Ernst Troeltsch ◽  
Epistemological Views ◽  
Modern Form

Until the seventies, Karl Barth's picture of Ernst Troeltsch (1865–1923) dominated the Anglo-phone reception of Troeltsch. In this reading, Troeltsch is the last of the great liberal protestant theologians who endeavoured to save Christianity by romanticising the Enlightenment. But that was Barth's Troeltsch. The past twenty years of Troeltsch studies have undermined this hegemonic view to recover a proto—postmodern thinker who recognised the profound cultural implications of the epistemological views embedded in modern science as in history and sociology. For Troeltsch the implications of epistemological relativity and historical relativism required the historicisation of the essence of Christianity. It also required a reformulation of the central doctrines of Christian faith; this was Troeltsch's theological project. Finally, it required a search for a modern form of Christian faith which authenticated personal mysticism and achieved normative Christian community life within a broader domain of a secular social democratic polity.

scholarly journals Whose Enlightenment?

2017 ◽  
Vol 48 ◽  
pp. 111-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franz L. Fillafer
Keyword(s):  
Central Europe ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
The Self ◽  
Religious Toleration ◽  
Political Liberty ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
Central European ◽  
The Enlightenment

The Enlightenment seems out of kilter. Until fairly recently, its trajectories were beguilingly simple and straightforward. Devised by Western metropolitan masterminds, the Enlightenment was piously appropriated by their latter-day apprentices in Central and Eastern Europe. This process of benign percolation made modern science, political liberty, and religious toleration trickle down to East-Central Europe. The self-orientalizing of nineteenth-century Central European intellectuals reinforced this impression, making concepts that were ostensibly authentic and pristine at their “Western” sources seem garbled and skewed once appropriated in their region.

scholarly journals Justification of human nature. Universalism and cultural diversity from the point of view of modern science

KANT ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 229-236
Author(s):  
Alexander Brodsky
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Historical Experience ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
And Behavior

In this article the author is going to prove that all the data of recent decades obtained in the field of neurophysiology, linguistics, logic, semiotics and anthropology prove that the idea of a unite Human Nature, which was postulated by the Enlightenment, is not a fiction or even "abstraction", but a perfectly recognizable (though nondescript) reality. All humans are the same, and human nature does not depend on culture. However, the paper addresses not so much the data as their consequences. The universal Human Nature implies the existence of uniform standards of thinking and behavior (ethics), unaffiliated with historical experience, traditions, and beliefs. These standards are available to everyone. But they are unevenly implemented in various cultures due to various historical circumstances.

scholarly journals Cognitive rules, institutions, and economic growth: Douglass North and beyond

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
AVNER GREIF ◽  
JOEL MOKYR
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Institutional Change ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Social Constructs ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Douglass North

AbstractDouglass North's writing on institutional change recognized from the very start that such change depends on cognition and beliefs. Yet, although he focused on individual beliefs, we argue in this paper that such beliefs are social constructs. We suggest that institutions – rules, expectations, and norms – are based on shared cognitive rules. Cognitive rules are social constructs that convey information that distills and summarizes society's beliefs and experience. These rules have to be self-enforcing and self-confirming, but they do not have to be ‘correct’. We describe the characteristics of such rules in the context of a market for ideas, and illustrate their importance in two developments central to the growth of modern economies: the rise of the modern state with its legitimacy based on consent, and the rise of modern science-based technology that was the product of the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment.

11. Human Rights

2019 ◽  
pp. 220-240
Author(s):  
Tom Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
World War ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Cultural Rights ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
Human Rights Movement

This chapter focuses on human rights. Human rights are derived historically from the idea of natural law as it developed on a strong religious basis in late medieval Europe and, later, in a more secularized form during the more rationalist period of the Enlightenment. Meanwhile, the contemporary human rights movement stems from the aftermath of World War II. It is associated, domestically, with constitutional bills of rights and, internationally, with the work of the United Nations. Human rights may be defined as universal rights of great moral and political significance that belong to all human beings by virtue of their humanity. They are said to be overriding and absolute. Human rights may be divided into three overlapping groups: civil and political rights; economic, social, and cultural rights; and group or collective rights for development and self-determination.

NEW DIRECTIONS IN NATURAL LAW

2016 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 367-379 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vincent Lloyd
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Political Rhetoric ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
Moral Law ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
New Directions

Notoriously, natural law means many things to many people. Natural law is discussed quite differently in the fields of ethics, law, and theology; it is employed quite differently in the spheres of political rhetoric, churches, and academia; it has been used quite differently in the eras of ancient Rome, medieval Europe, the Enlightenment, and the postmodern West; and something akin to natural law appears, with quite different associations, in the religious traditions of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism. In some contexts natural law refers to God's moral law. In other contexts natural law consists of norms that can be discerned solely through human reason. In still other contexts natural law describes rules that are naturally embedded in the physical world.

The mechanical life of plants: Descartes on botany

2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
FABRIZIO BALDASSARRI
Keyword(s):  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Rene Descartes ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Significant Trend ◽  
Philosophical Approach ◽  
Direct Observations ◽  
Direct Bearing ◽  
René Descartes

AbstractIn this article, I argue that the French philosopher René Descartes was far more involved in the study of plants than has been generally recognized. We know that he did not include a botanical section in his natural philosophy, and sometimes he differentiated between plants and living bodies. His position was, moreover, characterized by a methodological rejection of the catalogues of plants. However, this paper reveals a significant trend in Descartes's naturalistic pursuits, starting from the end of 1637, whereby he became increasingly interested in plants. I explore this shift by examining both Descartes's correspondence and several notes contained in theExcerpta anatomica. Grounded in direct observations, Descartes's work on vegetation provides a modest, though not unimportant, contribution to a natural-philosophical approach to the vegetal realm. This had a direct bearing on his lifelong ambition to explain the nature of living bodies and also fuelled the emergence of botany as a modern science.

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