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The Scientific Revolution

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The Scientific Revolution and the new learning occurred between 1550 and 1750 and was the age of the discovery of science. The new learning (a composite of scientific method and rational inquiry), was primarily interpreted by European scientists who brought about knowledge, understanding and transformations in the forms of observations, experimentation, mathematical verification and inventions. As with earlier scientists who based their truths and beliefs on religion, scientists during this period based their new learning on knowledge with focuses on empiricism (sense-experience), perceptions, observations and rationalizations for example. Philosopher and scientist Francis Bacon advanced empiricism and published “Novum Organum” (which means …show more content…

One of Desacartes’ most important philosophic works was “Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason and Seeking for Truth in the Services”. This work was based on Desacartes’ rationalization and rules of reasoning which were to “never accept anything as true that you do not clearly know to be true; dissect a problem into as many parts as possible; reason from simple to complex knowledge; and finally, draw complete and exhaustive conclusions” (Fiero 117). Desacartes was an analytical thinker and he was doubtful about everything including his “existence as a thinking individual” (Fiero 117). He and other philosophers during this era believed and advocated deism, which was a religious belief based upon a human’s own reasoning rather than that of seeing God as one who did not interfere with nature and allowed the world to run unattended. Desacartes introduced the Cartesian philosophy or cartesian dualism which is the “view that holds the mind (a thinking entity) as distinct from the body” (Fiero 117). He was also known as the father of geometry with his use of algebraic solutions and providing the foundation for calculus. Desacartes coined the phrase “I think, therefore I am” which was the premises for all his …show more content…

Like Bacon, Locke expounded on empiricism (sense-experience) and theorized, as stated above that “the human mind at birth is a tabula rasa (“blank state”) (Fiero 119). In order to understand these ideas, he wrote “Essay Concerning Human Understanding”. He believed “that human beings are born in total ignorance, and that even our theoretical ideas of identity, quantity, and substance are derived from experience” (Cranston, 1957). He believed that in addition to normal ideas in our mind, we have ideas when we feel, taste, smile, hear and see which are connected to sensation. He observed two types of ideas, “those ideas which are simple, that the mind receives passively, and which are perceived immediately through either external or internal senses (thought), and complex ideas, which the mind produces by exercising its own powers” (Cranston, 1957). Examples of simple ideas like are like whiteness or softness of an object while examples of complex ideas fall within three classes: ideas of substance, ideas of mode and ideas of relationship. Locke confirmed Bacon’s writings that everything one knows begins from sensory experience. Locke believed that human knowledge, if properly applied, would

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