editor, Administrators
2,020
edits
Changes
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
no edit summary
Descartes' physical natural philosophy did not fare nearly so well. Within fifty years, Issac Newton (1642-1726) formulated a more mathematically precise and explanatorily powerful physical theory, which became the accepted theory of the physical world. It rejected a major tenet of Descartes' corpuscularism by positing a gravitational force that acted at a distance. Newton's laws of motion, however, bore important similarities to those formulated earlier by Descartes. [[CiteRef::Clarke (1992)]] As practicing scientists, researchers like Newton and Robert Boyle (1627-1691)did not, as did Descartes, seek certain knowledge of the real essences of material objects. Instead, they sought an ordering of phenomenal experience which would enable them to predict nature's course with the best available theory. [[CiteRef::Osler 1970]]
Descartes method itself was criticized by two sympathetic figures; Antoine Arnauld and Marin Mersenne. Their criticism had to do with Descartes demonstration of the existence of God, which is the linchpin of his method. Descartes claims that our belief in the reliability of the clear and distinct perceptions of the human intellect depends on our knowledge of the existence of God as the source of that capacity. But how could that knowledge be established in the first place? If we answer that we can prove God's existence from premises we clearly and distinctly perceive, then the argument collapses into circularity. Since Descartes' argument that is is possible for us to have scientific knowledge of the world fails with it, since it depends on God to underwrite the reliability of our senses and intellect. This criticism, called the '''Cartesian Circle''', was never successfully countered. Within a generation, Descartes quest for certainty in scientific knowledge was widely recognized to have failed. [[CiteRef::Cottingham (1992)]][[CiteRef::Osler (1970)]] In 1650, John Locke and the British Empiricists brought forth a new conception of scientific knowledge that was more modest than Descartes' failed quest for certainty. The empiricists argued for experience, rather than a priori reason, as the basis for human knowledge, and sought a philosophy of science more in keeping with scientific practice. [[CiteRef::Uzgalis (2016)]][[CiteRef::Osler (1970)]]
|Related Topics=Method, Methodology,
|Page Status=Needs Editing
}}
