RENAISSANCE

Lorenzo de' Medici

Ruler of Florence

and patron of arts

Lorenzo the

Magnificent

The Elizabethan era (16th century to the early

17th century) - the English Renaissance with the

work of writers William Shakespeare,

Christopher Marlowe, John Milton, and Edmund

Spenser.

• 1450 – first publication – the bible.

by 1492 – 20 million books had been printed.

1492 – Christopher Columbus sets sail.

Heresy (from Greek αἵρεσις, which originally meant "choice") is an accusation levied against members of another group which has beliefs which conflict with those of the accusers. It is usually used to discuss violations of religious or traditional laws or codes, although it is used by some political extremists to refer to their opponents. It carries the connotation of behaviors or beliefs likely to undermine accepted morality and cause tangible evils, damnation, or other punishment.

Heresy?

WASHINGTON – Judge Andrew Napolitano’s

“Freedom Watch” on Fox Business Channel,

arguably the most hard-hitting conservative

show on TV, is being dropped by the network

later this month in a major shakeup of the

lineup. FBC is also dropping shows by David

Asman and Eric Bolling. The network will

repeat earlier shows, “The Willis Report,”

“Cavuto” and “Lou Dobbs Tonight” in their

place.

Humanism

The view that we can make sense of the world using reason, experience and shared human values and that we can live good lives without religious or superstitious beliefs.

Martin Luther

German father of the Protestant Reformation

• Called for more personalized, less ritualized religion.

• Reformation polka

• Challenged the absolute authority of the Pope over the Church by maintaining that the doctrine of indulgences, as authorized and taught by the Pope, was wrong.

• Salvation was by faith alone without reference to good works, alms, penance, or the Church's sacraments.

• challenged the authority of the Church by maintaining that all doctrines and dogmata of the Church not found in Scripture should be discarded.

The Edict of Worms was a decree issued on 25 May 1521 by Emperor Charles V, declaring:

“For this reason we forbid anyone from this time forward to dare, either by words or by deeds, to receive, defend, sustain, or favor the said Martin Luther. On the contrary, we want him to be apprehended and punished as a notorious heretic, as he deserves, to be brought personally before us, or to be securely guarded until those who have captured him inform us, where upon we will order the appropriate manner of proceeding against the said Luther. Those who will help in his capture will be rewarded generously for their good work.”

John Calvin

Ruled Geneva as a religious dictatorship

- No drinking, dancing, icons, candles, incense and obligatory church attendance for everyone.

- In Calvin’s view, Man, who is corrupt, is confronted by the omnipotent (all powerful) and omnipresent (present everywhere) God who before the world began predestined some for eternal salvation (the Elect) while the others would suffer everlasting damnation (the Reprobates).

The chosen few were saved by the operation of divine grace which cannot be challenged and cannot be earned by Man’s merits. You might have lead what you might have considered a perfectly good life that was true to God but if you were a reprobate you remained one because for all your qualities you were inherently corrupt and God would know this even if you did not. However, a reprobate by behaving decently could achieve an inner conviction of salvation. An Elect could never fall from grace.

Renaissance Science

1543 – Nicolaus Copernicus

- Heleocentric view of the world.

- As opposed to a ptolemic (Earth centered).

- Contrary to common sense.

- Biblical reference. (5 days creating earth, 1 day on universe and 1 day on resting).

Giordano Bruno: (1548 – 1600)

-Proposed the existence of multiple suns and innumerable earths, each revolving around its own sun and potentially inhabited by sentient beings ~ a limitless universe.

-Burned at the stake in 1600.

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)

Uses of the Telescope (war and business)

Galileo used it to peer into the sky.

His finding supported Copernicus.

Pope Urban supported the publication of Copernicus but insisted on a disclaimer that Coperinicanism was a hypothesis.

“Simplicius’ Disclaimer”

“The Holy Spirit intended to teach us how

to go to heaven, not how the heavens go”.

"My dear Kepler, I wish that we might laugh at the remarkable

stupidity of the common herd. What do you have to say about the

principal philosophers of this academy who are filled with the

stubbornness of an asp and do not want to look at either the planets,

the moon or the telescope, even though I have freely and

deliberately offered them the opportunity a thousand times? Truly,

just as the asp stops its ears, so do these philosophers shut their

eyes to the light of truth."

In 2000, Pope John Paul II issued a

formal apology for all the mistakes

committed by some Catholics in the last

2,000 years of the Catholic Church's

history, including the trial of Galileo

among others.

Sir Isaac Newton (1642 – 1727)

If I have been able to see further, it was only

because I stood on the shoulders of giants.

‘This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and

comets, could only proceed from the counsel and

dominion of an intelligent Being. …”

Sir Edmund Halley used Newton’s Laws of

motion to predict the next occurrences of

Halley’s comet.

Modern Day Pythagoras

When a body is once in motion, it moveth, unless something

else hinder it, eternally; and whatsoever hindereth it

cannot in a instant, but (only) in time and by degrees, quite

extinguish it; and as we see in the water, though the wind

cease, the waves give not over rolling for a long time after;

so also it happenth in that motion that is made in the

internal parts of a man, then, when he sees, dreams, etc.

For after the object is removed, if the eye shut, we still

retain an image of the things seen, though more obscure

than when it was seen.

1600’ s :The Third Visitation!

Science is flourishing across Europe (but it is still dangerous).

Protopsychologists: Returned to questions asked by Greek Philosophers regarding the human mind.

- limited to tools of meditation and reflection

Invisible Colleges

The Royal Society of London for

Improving Natural Knowledge”

- common theme was to acquire

knowledge through experimental

investigation

ARE NEWSGROUPS EXTENDING

"INVISIBLE COLLEGES" INTO THE DIGITAL

INFRASTRUCTURE OF SCIENCE?

Economics of Innovation and New Technology

Sir Francis Bacon (1605)

When I set before the conditions of these times, in

which learning hath made her third visitation or

circuit, in all the qualities thereof: the excellence and

vivacity of the wits of this age, the noble and lights

which we have the travails of ancient writers: the art

of printing, which communicateth books to men of all

fortunes: the openness of the world by navigation,

which hath disclosed multitudes of experiments, and a

mass of natural history …I can not but be raised to

this persuasion, that this third period of time will far

surpass that of the Graecian and Roman learning.

René Descartes (1596 – 1650)

•Rationalist

First –doubt everything.

I think, therefore, I am. (Cogito, ergo sum)

I thence concluded that I was a substance whose whole essence or nature consists only in thinking, and which, that it may exist, has need of no place, nor is dependent on any material thing; so that ‘I’, that is to say, the mind by which I am what I am, is wholly distinct from the body, and is even more easily known than the latter …

So why is he not a solipsists???

God has provided him with a working mind and sensory system and does not desire to deceive him. From this supposition, however, he finally establishes the possibility of acquiring knowledge about the world based on deduction and perception.

Rationalist

From there, he went on to conclude that there were a number of things equally certain: God, time and space, the world, mathematics. These things, he said, were innate -- in-born -- to the mind. You derive them not from experience but from the nature of one’s mind itself. E.g., Ideas in his mind either come from within or from without. He is an imperfect, finite being. Therefore, his conception of God as a perfect, infinite being could have only come from without – from God. Therefore, God exists.

Mechanical-hydraulic theory of human behavior

Royal Automata

Mind-Body ControversyInteractive Dualism

- pineal Gland

Differ from animals

because of our souls.

Six-Passions – wonder, love, hate, desire, joy and sadness.

Pineal Gland

Benedict Spinoza• Parallelism

- Monistic Parallelism

Every bodily event coexists with and is coordinated to a mental event. Body and mind correlate, but they do not cause one another. The apparent interaction arises from ignorance on our part and shows only the coincidence of actions; an illusion.

God is the universe.

Leibniz – psychophysical parallelosm.

fatalism [ˈfeɪtəˌlɪzəm] n

1. (Philosophy) the philosophical doctrine that all events are predetermined so that man is powerless to alter his destiny

2. (Philosophy) the acceptance of and submission to this doctrine

3. a lack of effort or action in the face of difficulty fatalist n

Gottfried Leibniz (Nativist)

Metaphor of a block of veined Marble.

The veins represent the minds inborn dispositions. The sculptor’s hand frees a figure from this marble, but the figure was present before the chisel was ever lifted. Ideas are present in the mind at birth, and the role of experience is to allow them to emerge.

The EmpiricistsNot yet a science of mind but a philosophical belief that Knowledge comes from empirical observation.

Thomas Hobbes• Social contract theory Individuals came together and ceded some of their individual rights so that others would cede theirs (e.g. person A gives up his/her right to kill person B if person B does the same). This resulted in the establishment of society, and by extension, the state, a sovereign entity which was to protect these new rights which were now to regulate societal interactions. Society was thus no longer anarchic.

• Monarchist

Calvin and Hobbes

We are basically aggressive animals.

Hobbes is proud to be an animal and seems to have a low opinion of humans in general (when Calvin is wondering why people exist, Hobbes simply responds "tiger food")

According to Calvin,

"Hobbes is always a little

loopy when he comes out

of the dryer."

According to Hobbes tigers need to learn physics, biology and artistic expression to hunt.

“For there is no conception in man’s mind, which hath not

first been begotten upon the organs of the sense.”

-Thomas Hobbes

Calvin and Hobbes

Eyes Wide open

Spaceman Spiff

Imagination being only of

those things which have

formally been perceived by

sense . . . is simple

imagination, as when one

imagined a man or a horse,

which he hath seen before.

The other is compounded; as

when, from the sight of a man

at one time and of a horse at

another, we conceive in our

minds a centaur.

John Locke

Empiricist

Humans are innately good.

People are born equal in potential (Tabla Rasa) - – education is essential.

Developmental Issues

Two Sources of ideas

-Sensible and Reflective

-Sensation is not always reliable

-Reflective processes involve associations and abstractions.

Molyneux's question:

``Suppose a Man born blind, and now adult, and taught by his touch to distinguish between a Cube and a Sphere of the same metal, and nightly the same bigness, so as to tell, when he felt one and other, which is the Cube, which the Sphere. Suppose then the Cube and Sphere placed on a Table, and the Blind Man to be made to see.

Quaere, Whether by his sight, before he touch'd them, he could now distinguish, and tell, which is the Globe, which the Cube (Locke 1694, page 67)

Empiricist philosophers, like Locke, argued that we

learn to perceive visual space by associating it with

touch and muscular movement.

George Berkeley

“If a tree falls in the forest and no one it there, does it make a sound.”

Rationalist (immaterialism) – Matter does not exit in and of itself; it exists because it is perceived.

(Object Permanence????)

• God in the QuadA limerick by Monsignor Ronald Knox

• There was a young man who said, "God Must think it exceedingly odd If he finds that this tree Continues to be When there's no one about in the Quad."

REPLY

• Dear Sir: Your astonishment's odd: I am always about in the Quad. And that's why the tree Will continue to be, Since observed by Yours faithfully, GOD.

David Hume (1776)

“I sense therefore I am.”

Pneumatic Philosophy

Advocated for a new science of human nature

• Use the methods of natural science

• Human thought is the product of mental processes and can be studied scientifically.

• Perhaps Hume is the father of Psychology!!