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Summary Mid-term Thinking about science (TAS) (OTH)
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PART 2 of Philosophy Questions, Answers and SOS
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Mid-term: Thinking About ScienceLearning goals
1. Learn about relevant theories and concepts in epistemology and philosophy of
science.
2. Understand the nature and cultural authority of science.
3. Able to construct and assess a philosophical argument relating to thinking about
science.
4. Able to analyze the distinction between science and pseudo-science.
5. Able to evaluate philosophical claims about science.
6. Able to develop an informed and nuanced view on science.
Rationalism and Empiricism in Ancient Greece
Epistemology = how can we have knowledge? How can we be sure that the ideas that
we have in our minds are about reality (and not mere opinion, dreams, or illusions)?
Justification in the ways that we acquire knowledge; but what ways are there?
Two approaches:
- Rationalism = true knowledge about reality derives from the proper use of our
reasoning capacities.
- Empiricism = sense experience is the ultimate sources of knowledge.
Heraclites and Parmenides have two opposing vies regarding the central issue about the
difference between being and becoming.
Heraclites of Ephese (600 – 540 b.c.)
Convinced that change (change = flux) is at the heart of existence Panta rei =
everything flows, nothing really is, everything becomes. Everything changes.
e.g. ‘You cannot step twice into the same rives; for fresh water are ever flowing in upon
you’.
Due to the ever-changing nature of appearances most people are not able to attain
knowledge. Only those who are capable of grasping the hidden and fundamental law
(Logos), behind appearances can be said to arrive at knowledge.
- Change is real
- Being is not real
Parmenides of Elea (510 – 440 b.c.)
Senses mislead human beings into thinking that things are changing all the time. Real
existence means to be without change everything is, nothing becomes. Appearances
are deceptive. You need reason to discover the underlying eternal reality: knowledge
pertains to a hidden order beyond the transient appearances.
- Being is real
- Change is not real
Heraclites and Parmenides discussion lead to the issue of epistemology Socratic
question: what is knowledge?
Socrates (470 – 399 b.c.)
Central question: how to live a good life? (Ethics rather than epistemology).
- Goodness exists, contra the sophists e.g. Protagoras: “man is the measure of all
things” (homo mensura).
- But how to get a good knowledge of goodness, justice, etc.?
- Socrates claimed to know that he didn’t know.
, - Intellectual midwifery = discussions with his fellow Athenians to bring about true
ideas.
- The goal is to derive at the essence of concepts such as goodness, love, justice,
beauty, etc.
Plato (427 – 347 b.c.)
Student of Socrates, documented Socrates’ teaching. However, causes confusion
sometimes regarding the philosophy of Socrates due to Plato’s interpretations. Also,
Parmenides and Heraclites were great inspirers for Plato. Plato was a more systematic
thinker:
- Not just ethics, but also meta physics and epistemology; in writing!
- Whitehead: Western philosophy nothing but “a series of footnotes to Plato”.
Metaphysics = the branch of philosophy that asks and tries to answer the pre-eminent
philosophical questions:
- Why is there something rather than nothing?
- What is the world made of?
- Central questions since the start of Western philosophy.
The investigation of these questions is ontology (Greek: to on): English translation: to
be.
Archè = 1st principle, the basis of all things (previous to Socrates).
- Thales of Miletos = water
- Anaximander = to apeiron, the undefined
- Anaximenes = fire
- Leucippos = atoms
Empiricists are inclined to understanding knowledge to be perceptions. E.g. someone
knows that the table is white because he saw that the table is white.
Plato argued that knowledge and perception can be combined. With the perceived world
in constant flux, our perceptions, and hence our knowledge will vary from moment to
moment, from person to person. “man is the measure of all things” (homo mensura).
- Perception differs from person to person.
- Knowledge relative to the observer (sophists).
o Relativity of truth: everyone’s right about his/her own perception
(limitation; everything is true).
o No investigation/criticism possible.
- Perception and common sense only lead to opinions, not knowledge.
- Knowledge is about how things really are; no room for observation.
Truth and knowledge is epistèmè. Are about how things really are, not how they are for
me and you. Therefore, the above was unacceptable for Plato Perception
knowledge. For knowledge we cannot appeal to the evidence of observation, given the
perpetual flux of natural reality.
Plato’s theory of Forms
Plato sides with Parmenides on the issue of what is real and what not, because in his
view being is perfect, which for him implies that it has to be unchangeable. Plato
believed that the real world cannot be the ever-changing world of appearances, but a
supernatural realm which contains the eternal and perfect Forms/Ideas.
- Parmenides: reality is perfect reality is not the world of perceptions, but a
supernatural realm which contains the eternal and perfect forms.
- This world is inaccessible to the senses, only knowledge through reason
(rationalism).
- Influence of geometry: certain knowledge about ideal figures, not particular
instances.
, Plato explained his metaphysics using an allegory of human existence; the famous
allegory of the cave.
Human beings contenting themselves with observations of the world as it appears to
them by sensory experience are in a similar position to the prisoners: they mistake
appearance for reality. Their souls are imprisoned in their bodies and they think that
whatever they perceive with their sense organs must be the real world. We must learn to
‘see’ behind the appearances into the world of Forms: the ultimate realities that ground
true knowledge.
- Empirical investigation is inadequate for knowledge, it solely brings a reality from
the Heraclitean flux (world of becoming and passing away).
- True knowledge requires the apprehension of the eternal Forms.
- Plato: therefore, we can gain knowledge through reasoning.
Nativism = the doctrine (related to rationalism), that humans possess innate (inborn)
ideas (already possesses at birth).
- No observation needed, we don’t need senses for knowledge.
- Plato: we are born possessing all knowledge
- Reincarnation: soul forgets everything at birth.
- Learning is remembering knowledge through reason (anamneses).
Rationalism can be traced to Plato, the origins of the competing view – empiricism – can
be discovered in the work of Aristotle.
Aristotle (384 – 322 b.c.)
Student of Plato, however seemed to disagree completely: experience matters!
- The 1st great scientist: physics, astronomy, biology, etc.
- Knowledge requires empirical facts and we must leave abstract theorizing in order
to make scientific progress possible.
- Aristotle’s metaphysics: this-wordly rather than other-wordly: the essences are in
the natural world and thus accessible by empirical inquiry. All knowledge comes
ultimately from observing nature.
- Thomas Aquino: “Nothing is in the intellect which was not 1st found in the senses”
(Peripathetic Axiom).
Empiricism
- The mind is a tabula rasa, at birth there is no knowledge at all.
- The mind becomes inscribed through experience. (Im-pressions, in-formation).
- Aristotle’s empiricist doctrine that all knowledge derives from sensory information
has important implications for scientific methodology Organon (“Instrument) =
his six logical treatises: on the scientific method.
o Science (epistèmè) consists in discovery of causes of objects.
o Reasoning from basic theoretical principles to particular cases.
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