An experiment, in the standard scientific sense of the term, is a procedure in which some object of study is subjected to interventions that aim at obtaining a predictable outcome or at least predictable aspects of the outcome. The distinction between an experiment and a non-experimental observation is important since they are tailored to different epistemic needs. Experimentation has its origin in pre-scientific technological experiments that were undertaken in order to find the best technological means to achieve chosen ends. Important (...) parts of the methodological arsenal of modern experimental science can be traced back to this pre-scientific, technological tradition. It is claimed that experimentation involves a unique combination of acting and observing, a combination whose unique epistemological properties have not yet been fully clarified. (shrink)

It has been widely believed since the nineteenth century that modern science provides a serious challenge to religion, but less agreement as to the reason. One main complication is that whenever there has been broad consensus for a scientific theory that challenges traditional religious doctrines, one finds religious believers endorsing the theory or even formulating it. As a result, atheists who argue for the incompatibility of science and religion often go beyond the religious implications of individual scientific theories, arguing that (...) the sciences taken together provide a comprehensive challenge to religious belief. Scientific theories, on this view, can be integrated to form a general vision of humans and our place in nature, one that excludes the existence of supernatural phenomena to which many religious traditions refer. The most common name given to this general vision is the scientific worldview. The purpose of my paper is to argue that the relation of a worldview to science is more complex and ambiguous than this position allows, drawing upon recent work in the history and philosophy of science. While there are other ways to complicate the picture, this paper will focus on differing views that scientists and philosophers have on the proper scope and limits of scientific inquiry. I will identify two different types of science—Baconian and Cartesian—that have different ambitions with respect to scientific theories, and thus different answers about the possibility of a scientific worldview. The paper will conclude by showing how their differing intuitions about scientific inquiry are evident in contemporary debates about reductionism, drawing upon the work of two physicists, Steven Weinberg and John Polkinghorne. History is more complex than this simple schema allows, of course, but these types provide a useful first approximation into the ambiguities of modern science. (shrink)

Civilizations can be perceived as living human beings that are born, mature, age, and ultimately die and disappear, passing their legacy to the future generations. These transitions may be projected to the different stages of cognitive development of children. The Western Civilization, which embodies our current state of cultural advancement from the Classic Greek to the modern period, can be paralleled by the gradual transitions of human beings toward adulthood. From this perspective, the ancient Greek era resembles the toddler years (...) of humanity at which the first “why”-type questions are being asked. The theocratic period that followed until the Renaissance can be seen as our childhood, when people lived their lives under the tight boundaries set by religious authorities. The period spanning from the Enlightenment until almost the end of the 20th century can be considered as our teenage years when people rediscover their past, are liberated from superstition, and set the path forward based on reason by a manner at which the distinction between plausible and feasible is vague. Within this scheme, postmodernism also finds its place in our teenhood. The last few decades, from this perspective, signify our entrance to adulthood at which major questions are considered answered, or at least settled, and the only path forward perceived as feasible is the one that is followed already, a state that is bringing us closer to our intellectual aging and its inevitable death. Some signs of aging-related pathologies are already manifested in today’s technology-intensive society. By identifying our intellectual age and by appreciating our health status, we may be able to proactively delay or even avert our intellectual aging and death. (shrink)

This chapter considers the encounter of skepticism with the Kantian and post-Kantian philosophical enterprise and focuses on the intriguing feature whereby it is assimilated into this enterprise. In this period, skepticism becomes interchangeable with its other, which helps understand the proliferation of many kinds of views under its name and which forms the background for transforming skepticism into an anonymous, routine practice of raising objections and counter-objections to one’s own view. German philosophers of this era counterpose skepticism to dogmatism and (...) criticism, ancient to modern skepticism, and, importantly, conceptualize the transitions from one form to another, which forms the conceptual matrix in which new disciplinary forms, such as psychology, anthropology, and historicism contend for cultural-intellectual standing beside philosophy. I present this assimilationist trajectory by reviewing three well-known moments of this encounter of skepticism and idealism: (1) Kant’s idealization of skepticism as a floating position amidst various philosophical positions through the dialectic, polemics, systematics, and history of pure reason; (2) Fichte’s schematic conception of skepticism as a dispute of systems in the early Wissenschaftslehre following his review of the skeptic G. E. Schulze’s attacks on Critical philosophy; (3) Hegel’s historicizing conception of skepticism in the context of differences between subjective idealism and speculative thought and his early Jena review of another work by the same skeptic Schulze. (shrink)

The status of the laws of nature in Hobbes’s Leviathan has been a continual point of disagreement among scholars. Many agree that since Hobbes claims that civil philosophy is a science, the answer lies in an understanding of the nature of Hobbesian science more generally. In this paper, I argue that Hobbes’s view of the construction of geometrical figures sheds light upon the status of the laws of nature. In short, I claim that the laws play the same role as (...) the component parts – what Hobbes calls the “cause” – of geometrical figures. To make this argument, I show that in both geometry and civil philosophy, Hobbes proceeds by a method of synthetic demonstration as follows: 1) offering a thought experiment by privation; 2) providing definitions by explication of “simple conceptions” within the thought experiment; and 3) formulating generative definitions by making use of those definitions by explication. In just the same way that Hobbes says that the geometer should “put together” the parts of a square to learn its cause, I argue that the laws of nature are the cause of peace. (shrink)

El trabajo de investigación busca esclarecer la Forma baconiana como “ley natural”. Se sostiene que los otros sentidos del concepto de Forma en Bacon, tales como diferencia verdadera, fuente de emanación o naturaleza naturante, forman parte de su eclecticismo, pero en estricto sentido, esas expresiones no dicen nada en torno a las leyes de las naturalezas simples o de los fenómenos físicos. En contraste, la Forma como ley no sólo permite comprender mejor la peculiar lectura de Bacon sobre la legalidad (...) natural, sino que posibilita establecer nexos con la parte operativa. En la investigación también se escudriñan las relaciones de la ley natural baconiana con la teología y la ley jurídica. (shrink)

In this paper, I ask whether Francis Bacon constitutes a revealing exception to the modern predilection for ‘system.’ First, I consider evidence for reading Bacon as a philosopher strongly attracted toward the ideal of system. Second, I show how reflecting on Bacon’s philosophical practice can motivate an ‘anti- system‘ reading of his texts. In considering the small number of works in which Bacon explicitly discusses ‘system’ under that name (in particular, the Descriptio globi intellectualis), I clarify what is and is (...) not meant by ‘philosophical system’ as distinct from other ideas of system (e.g. ‘system of the heavens’). Third, I draw from the Temporis Masculus Partum and Novum Organum to argue that Bacon’s doctrine of the ‘idols of the mind’ amounts to a thoroughgoing critique of system in philosophy. Fourth, I show how and why Bacon deploys the aphoristic form in Novum Organum as an alternative to system. I conclude by suggesting some ways in which an ‘anti-system’ reading of Bacon has the power to enhance our appreciation of other early modern authors who write philosophy without pretensions to system. (shrink)