Early Modern Epistemology

Fall 2012

Dr. David FrostInstructor of PhilosophyUniversity of Wisconsin, Stevens Point

Overview of all (Western) History

•Homo Sapiens evolve to anatomical modernity 200,000 years ago, and behavioral modernity 50,000 years ago.

•Discovery of agriculture, domestication of animals and permanent human settlements: 10,000 years

ago.

•Earliest proto-states in Egypt, Indus Valley and between Tigris and Euphrates (Mesopotamia): 6,000 years ago.

•First Egyptian dynasty: 3,000 B.C.

Overview of all (Western) History•Egypt

•Ancient Greece

•Roman Empire

•Middle Ages

•Renaissance

•Modernity

•Postmodernity

Brief Review of Medieval Period•The “Dark Ages”

•Rome fell

•Empire moved to the East leaving Europe to decline

•An ice age began in Europe

•Plagues spread in Europe

Brief Review of Medieval Period• Aquinas canonized Aristotle…

• So to disagree with Aristotle was blasphemy.

• Knowledge-giving explanations of the day involved…

• Teleology, purpose, first principles,

• Non-experimental, pre-scientific, scholastic thinking,

• Appeals to authority and Bible, which had real force.

• Philosophy was an orthodoxy; was not an “adventure”.

What Makes Renaissance New?• Rediscovery of Greek and Roman classic texts

• After sack of Constantinople in 1453 by Muslims, Byzantine peoples moved west.

• Luther’s Reformation

• Nails 95 theses to Church door in 1517

• An anti-corruption movement

• Leads to Thirty-Years War in 1618

• War-exhaustion led to pluralist secularism and relativism for the first time

What Makes Renaissance New?

•Printing press, 1447

•Rise of middle class

•Progress in art

•Rise of Humanism

•The New Science

What Makes Renaissance New?• The New Science…

• Comes with Bacon, Galileo, Descartes and later Newton

• Degrades experience

• Telescope, primary and secondary qualities

• Copernican system overturned geocentric system

• Arrived at new and different knowledge

• Parabolic flight versus impetus theory

Thank you