The Evolution of Modern Thought and Scientific Reason

The Transition from the Middle Ages to Modernity

Background: In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, knowledge revolved around the relationship between faith and reason, and society was organized according to a theocentric vision of the world. Modernity arises from the confrontation with the Middle Ages.

The Rise of Renaissance Humanism

If medieval life revolved around God, Renaissance humanism stars in a naturalistic turn that promotes anthropocentrism. Man becomes the center of intellectual interest, rediscovering Greco-Roman thinkers through philology. This change in European thought provoked a crisis of European consciousness determined by various social, economic, religious, cultural, artistic, and scientific events.

The Scientific Revolution and New Paradigms

The advance of scientific-technical knowledge demanded an update of knowledge, which meant the abandonment of Aristotelian physics and the geocentric image of the universe. It was necessary to replace previous paradigms based on metaphysical concepts with others of a physico-mathematical character, based on experience and a rigorous, logical method where observed facts were translated into mathematical language, thus establishing their reason. This established the origin of scientific laws.

Foundations of the Scientific Method

This method helped the development of science and consolidated the following philosophical-scientific principles:

1. Nature has a fixed natural order.
2. Our mind can master this order.
3. Scientific knowledge can achieve absolute certainty about the facts.

Rationalism and Empiricism

These changes were consolidated in the 17th century into two opposing philosophical systems that shape modernity: rationalism and empiricism. They agree on two points:

• The subject is the center and goal of all activity and decides the truth or falsity of any statement.
• Knowledge begins with an analysis to determine its scope.

However, while rationalism sets criteria for truth in the autonomy of reason and constructs knowledge deductively from innate principles independent of sense experience, empiricism starts from experience and, by induction, reaches hypotheses related to phenomena.

René Descartes and the Solution to the Crisis

With Descartes, philosophy begins modern rationalism as a solution to the crisis of European consciousness. He seeks certainty beyond doubt and applies a simple method with evident principles. However, we should not reduce his philosophy to methodology, because it is far more rich and complex.