Frans Hals: Descartes; Wikimedia Commons
The Philosophy of the 1600s
Galileo Galilei (1564 – 1642)
Galilei was a scientist who developed a telescope that permitted the study of the movements of the planets and the stars, as well as the microscope that improved medical studies. His studies supported the heliocentric findings of Copernicus, thus bringing Galilei into trouble with ecclesiastical authorities. Thomas Aquinas had said that when reason collided with the revelation of faith, revelation had precedence. Galilei said that where reason and revelation collided, revelation was not understood correctly. Galilei’s contribution was particularly important as regards the development of scientific method and the role of empirical observations, notably in his studies of gravity. Through his studies he raised many questions that would occupy scientists for centuries to come.
Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626)
Francis Bacon developed a program for scientific development governed by reason and empirical observations, with the aim of attaining truth and increased mastery of nature. His influence was great, not because of particular findings or particular ideas, but because of the long term perspectives he outlined for scientific research, scientific method and the role of empirical observations in this context. He placed utility of science for mankind in the face of natural forces, in focus for scientific research. The attainment of truth is necessary for developing utility.
Bacon pointed to four errors of thought (idola mentis) that would prevent development of truth: 1) Idols of the tribe; errors that humans fall into because of their senses. 2) Idols of the cave; individual errors due to private prejudices. 3) Idols of the market place; errors due to understanding of language and common notions. 4) Idols of the theatre; errors due to traditional statements and repeated “truths”.
René Descartes (1596 – 1650)
René Descartes is considered to be the first of the modern philosophers; he made a sharp distinction between matters of reason and matters of faith. He was careful not to challenge the church openly, in order to be left in peace to pursue his philosophical research as he wanted to. He sought basic truths from which other truths could be deducted, and from this starting point he had to discard all knowledge developed before.
Mathematics and geometry are for Descartes the starting point for the use of intuition and deduction. For him, logical deduction is science, not the movement from observation to the formulation of laws. Simplification was at the heart of his method. A problem needed to be decomposed into smaller component parts, in order to permit construction of logical relations between the components. He created analytic geometry, the translation of geometric problems into an algebraic language.
For Descartes, truth is not established through an ontology like in Augustin’s thoughts on God’s creation. Truth is produced by science, based on self-evident insights. His introduction to philosophy is linked to the experience that everything can be doubted. Where is the basis of thought to be found? What we consider as truths may be dreams and hallucinations. The methodical doubt is the way to certainty and clarity. Augustin preceded Descartes in saying that a doubter cannot doubt his own existence, because the more he doubts the more he confirms his own existence. Descartes’ Cogito ergo sum – I think, therefore I am – is an axiom of rationalism. If thinking and being are identical, then the clear must be truer and more real than the unclear.
In Descartes’ thinking, we must distinguish between ordo essendi (the world as it appears, which for Descartes is largely mechanistic) and ordo cognoscendi (the world of rationality). He established a clear distinction between soul and body, where the soul would be at the center of the process of thought. With Descartes as with Augustin, the two worlds are brought together by the notion of God, which links the human conscience with the outer world. We are imperfect beings, and yet we have a notion of something perfect and eternal. If we did not have such a notion, we would not consider ourselves as imperfect and temporal. Where can this idea come from? There must be a perfect being who has given us this notion. Only God can be causa suffisiens – sufficient cause – for this notion.
Thomas Hobbes (1588 – 1679)
Thomas Hobbes was a materialist in the atomistic sense that Democritus was. Matter and the movements of matter (like planets) was the only thing that existed, and natural science consists of explanations of causes and effects of such movements. God was not part of this, and there was no teleology at work. All qualitative changes can be traced back to quantitative changes. His world view was mechanistic, and the collaboration of mathematics and mechanics was at the center of his attention.
Hobbes was much preoccupied with questions of language in philosophy. Questions, notions and hypotheses have to be precise; his quest for precision was much stronger than that of Bacon.
Baruch Spinoza (1632 – 1677)
Baruch Spinoza was excommunicated from his Jewish congregation at the age of 24 because of his theological views. He meant that philosophy spoke the language of reason, and that the Scripture spoke the language of images. They cannot contradict each other. He would let philosophy decide what in the Scriptures might be true. In 1670 he published Tractatus theologico-politicus, a work that immediately created an outcry from Jewish and Christian congregations of both faiths, as well as from followers of Descartes. He contended that universities were bound by opinions that were in fashion, in the same way as the Church was bound by its dogmas. Thoughts that contain clear and visible ideas and definitions, are not wrong. False knowledge stems from unclear and clouded ideas. Definitions and methods were as important for him as for the other rationalists. Spinozas philosophy does not abstract generalized truths from sensorial observations. It derives statements from intuitive truths, definitions, postulates and axioms.
Spinoza thinks about God in terms of immanence. God and nature are one. He thought that this world is the only one, and that it is useless to seek salvation or freedom somewhere else. Body and soul, thinking and space, matter and spirit, are all aspects of one coherent reality. Descartes’ dualism is erased and replaced by an extreme and consequent monism. Man does not stand outside nature. Even his philosophy is part of the great system. Everything rests in God and follows an eternal order. God is not the creator of, the fundament of, or the guarantor of this order. He is himself this totality. Everything that happens must be explainable from the unchangeable nature of God.
Spinoza was opposed to the notion of free will. He thought that is an illusion due to lack of insight into the interdependence of thoughts and things. The will cannot cross the imperative that lies in clear and visible thoughts. Spinoza shared Socrates’ view that knowledge is virtue. Knowledge is about finding out why things are as they are, and – like the stoics – find your place in nature’s workings without trying to be something else. To be free is to exist within the necessity of one’s own nature. Freedom of thought is the only real freedom.
Everything has a drive aiming at self-promotion and survival of the self. Spinoza calls this drive conatus. Everything that is alive tries to keep its power and extend its activities. Love and hate, convenience and inconvenience, good and bad, are in his system derived from this drive. There is nothing good or bad in itself; our system of affectations and passions experience some things as useful and pleasing, and other things as disturbing and sad. Things that support our drive are considered as “good”, and things that stand in its way are seen as “evil”.
Isaac Newton (1642 – 1727)
Isaac Newton was a great mathematician who applied his knowledge to physics and astronomy. He discovered that the force that drew an apple from the tree to the ground, was the same as that which forced the moon and the planets into an ellipsoid circulation around the sun. His theory of gravity and the mechanics of the universe became the canon of natural science in the period of the Enlightenment.
Galilei was a scientist who developed a telescope that permitted the study of the movements of the planets and the stars, as well as the microscope that improved medical studies. His studies supported the heliocentric findings of Copernicus, thus bringing Galilei into trouble with ecclesiastical authorities. Thomas Aquinas had said that when reason collided with the revelation of faith, revelation had precedence. Galilei said that where reason and revelation collided, revelation was not understood correctly. Galilei’s contribution was particularly important as regards the development of scientific method and the role of empirical observations, notably in his studies of gravity. Through his studies he raised many questions that would occupy scientists for centuries to come.
Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626)
Francis Bacon developed a program for scientific development governed by reason and empirical observations, with the aim of attaining truth and increased mastery of nature. His influence was great, not because of particular findings or particular ideas, but because of the long term perspectives he outlined for scientific research, scientific method and the role of empirical observations in this context. He placed utility of science for mankind in the face of natural forces, in focus for scientific research. The attainment of truth is necessary for developing utility.
Bacon pointed to four errors of thought (idola mentis) that would prevent development of truth: 1) Idols of the tribe; errors that humans fall into because of their senses. 2) Idols of the cave; individual errors due to private prejudices. 3) Idols of the market place; errors due to understanding of language and common notions. 4) Idols of the theatre; errors due to traditional statements and repeated “truths”.
René Descartes (1596 – 1650)
René Descartes is considered to be the first of the modern philosophers; he made a sharp distinction between matters of reason and matters of faith. He was careful not to challenge the church openly, in order to be left in peace to pursue his philosophical research as he wanted to. He sought basic truths from which other truths could be deducted, and from this starting point he had to discard all knowledge developed before.
Mathematics and geometry are for Descartes the starting point for the use of intuition and deduction. For him, logical deduction is science, not the movement from observation to the formulation of laws. Simplification was at the heart of his method. A problem needed to be decomposed into smaller component parts, in order to permit construction of logical relations between the components. He created analytic geometry, the translation of geometric problems into an algebraic language.
For Descartes, truth is not established through an ontology like in Augustin’s thoughts on God’s creation. Truth is produced by science, based on self-evident insights. His introduction to philosophy is linked to the experience that everything can be doubted. Where is the basis of thought to be found? What we consider as truths may be dreams and hallucinations. The methodical doubt is the way to certainty and clarity. Augustin preceded Descartes in saying that a doubter cannot doubt his own existence, because the more he doubts the more he confirms his own existence. Descartes’ Cogito ergo sum – I think, therefore I am – is an axiom of rationalism. If thinking and being are identical, then the clear must be truer and more real than the unclear.
In Descartes’ thinking, we must distinguish between ordo essendi (the world as it appears, which for Descartes is largely mechanistic) and ordo cognoscendi (the world of rationality). He established a clear distinction between soul and body, where the soul would be at the center of the process of thought. With Descartes as with Augustin, the two worlds are brought together by the notion of God, which links the human conscience with the outer world. We are imperfect beings, and yet we have a notion of something perfect and eternal. If we did not have such a notion, we would not consider ourselves as imperfect and temporal. Where can this idea come from? There must be a perfect being who has given us this notion. Only God can be causa suffisiens – sufficient cause – for this notion.
Thomas Hobbes (1588 – 1679)
Thomas Hobbes was a materialist in the atomistic sense that Democritus was. Matter and the movements of matter (like planets) was the only thing that existed, and natural science consists of explanations of causes and effects of such movements. God was not part of this, and there was no teleology at work. All qualitative changes can be traced back to quantitative changes. His world view was mechanistic, and the collaboration of mathematics and mechanics was at the center of his attention.
Hobbes was much preoccupied with questions of language in philosophy. Questions, notions and hypotheses have to be precise; his quest for precision was much stronger than that of Bacon.
Baruch Spinoza (1632 – 1677)
Baruch Spinoza was excommunicated from his Jewish congregation at the age of 24 because of his theological views. He meant that philosophy spoke the language of reason, and that the Scripture spoke the language of images. They cannot contradict each other. He would let philosophy decide what in the Scriptures might be true. In 1670 he published Tractatus theologico-politicus, a work that immediately created an outcry from Jewish and Christian congregations of both faiths, as well as from followers of Descartes. He contended that universities were bound by opinions that were in fashion, in the same way as the Church was bound by its dogmas. Thoughts that contain clear and visible ideas and definitions, are not wrong. False knowledge stems from unclear and clouded ideas. Definitions and methods were as important for him as for the other rationalists. Spinozas philosophy does not abstract generalized truths from sensorial observations. It derives statements from intuitive truths, definitions, postulates and axioms.
Spinoza thinks about God in terms of immanence. God and nature are one. He thought that this world is the only one, and that it is useless to seek salvation or freedom somewhere else. Body and soul, thinking and space, matter and spirit, are all aspects of one coherent reality. Descartes’ dualism is erased and replaced by an extreme and consequent monism. Man does not stand outside nature. Even his philosophy is part of the great system. Everything rests in God and follows an eternal order. God is not the creator of, the fundament of, or the guarantor of this order. He is himself this totality. Everything that happens must be explainable from the unchangeable nature of God.
Spinoza was opposed to the notion of free will. He thought that is an illusion due to lack of insight into the interdependence of thoughts and things. The will cannot cross the imperative that lies in clear and visible thoughts. Spinoza shared Socrates’ view that knowledge is virtue. Knowledge is about finding out why things are as they are, and – like the stoics – find your place in nature’s workings without trying to be something else. To be free is to exist within the necessity of one’s own nature. Freedom of thought is the only real freedom.
Everything has a drive aiming at self-promotion and survival of the self. Spinoza calls this drive conatus. Everything that is alive tries to keep its power and extend its activities. Love and hate, convenience and inconvenience, good and bad, are in his system derived from this drive. There is nothing good or bad in itself; our system of affectations and passions experience some things as useful and pleasing, and other things as disturbing and sad. Things that support our drive are considered as “good”, and things that stand in its way are seen as “evil”.
Isaac Newton (1642 – 1727)
Isaac Newton was a great mathematician who applied his knowledge to physics and astronomy. He discovered that the force that drew an apple from the tree to the ground, was the same as that which forced the moon and the planets into an ellipsoid circulation around the sun. His theory of gravity and the mechanics of the universe became the canon of natural science in the period of the Enlightenment.