Descartes
• Medieval Philosophy: 800/900’s-1400’s
• Thomas Aquinas too Plato & Aristotle’s texts and harmonized them into Christian theology.
• Medieval period philosophy was second to theology- philosophers supplied theologists with rational explanations, they’re job was not to question but to explain.
• Ockham’s Razor (great medieval philosopher)- all things being equal the simplest solution is probably the best- KISS (keep it simple stupid!)
• Nominalism- the view that whatever is; is particular i-e. Everything is unique; there are not two identical things in the universe b/c everything is absolutely distinct (no twins exist).
• Descartes & Descartes were sympathetic to Nominalism.
• Descartes big fan of clarity & dislikes big fat vague terms (disliked qualitative explanations) but rather mathematically based explanations, in which language nature is written in.
• Medieval philosophers would often revert to qualitative explanations in order to explain natural phenomenon. These kind of explanations go back to Aristotle’s explanations (appeal to some mysterious quality that an object posses). Something is just intrinsically the way that it is, just re-describes whatever needs to be explained in stead of really explaining it. i.e.-why did the apple fall from the tree? Because it had the quality of heaviness.
• Around 1400’s-1500’s there was a major shift
• Divide between appearance and what’s behind the visible & audible surface-reality vs. appearance!
• Invention of movable type made books much more readily available to the mass people vs. single books previously written in Latin.
• Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz- Scientists &mathematicians in their own right.
• They try to reconcile religion & science and wish to establish a Philosophy based on reason but is shaped like mathematics in a way that its certain. Should be free from the trappings...
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