Scientific Revolution: Causes, Impacts, and Methods

The Scientific Revolution

Several factors contributed to the Scientific Revolution. These include the rediscovery of classical Greek texts and the supersession of the ideas of Archimedes and Aristotle. However, an even more crucial factor was the introduction of mathematical methods in experimental research. Investigating phenomena with a mathematical mindset was key.

Philosophical Implications of the New Science

The consideration that mathematics represents true and objective reality, coupled with the exaltation of human reason as an autonomous source of truth, changed man's image of the world and of himself.

The Reflection on Method

There were attempts to apply the same scientific method to philosophy. The scientific method includes both empirical and rational aspects. Galileo highlighted the rational aspect, outlining three steps:

• Analysis: Analyzing the phenomenon or decomposing it.
• Synthesis: Making an assumption.
• Verification: Testing the assumption.

Rationalism and Empiricism

Rationalism is characterized by the primacy given to reason in achieving truth. It holds that our real knowledge of reality has its origin and basis in reason.

Empiricists claim that our knowledge ultimately comes from the senses. The origin and basis of knowledge are in our sensory experience.

Descartes' Method

Descartes claimed that there must be a unique method for achieving knowledge since reason is unique. His method consists of four precepts:

1. Evidence: We must remove all knowledge that does not meet the Cartesian criterion of truth.
2. Analysis: Apply intuition, which allows us to formulate clear and distinct ideas on which to build the edifice of knowledge.
3. Synthesis: Use deduction, starting from the clear and distinct ideas, to build long chains of deductive reasoning.
4. Enumeration: Review our deductive chains to ensure that no error has been committed.

The method is clearly based on mathematics, but its extension to philosophy is not without its challenges. The two processes of knowledge, analysis and synthesis, correspond respectively to the two known modes of understanding: intuition, which provides clear and distinct ideas and, therefore, obvious ones, and deduction, which allows us to extend this evidence to the unknown. This method is suitable for reason and its natural way of knowing.