Today we will discuss the issue of the origins of Western Science. We'll go on a journey back in time to Greece.
start with the first philosophers who talk of something similar to science as a route to knowledge.
In chronological order we talk about:
The Ionian represented by Thales , expressing that nature can be explained on its own terms, without reference to an outside arbitrator. That is, belief based explanations of the actions of the gods over the world were little basis for such.
This school of thought also contributed to the creation of deductive geometry.
You know, the classic geometry theorem teaches us Pythagoras:
"The square of the hypotenuse of a right angle is equal to the sum of the squares of the legs" Sicilian Empedocles, another Ionian, found that air is a substance that exists, with his famous experiment in which water used to push air from a vessel, thereby demonstrating that the air is a corporeal substance. It also predicts that matter is composed of proportions of basic elements such as water, land, air and Hellfire. This would seem very basic today, but at the time was revolutionary, because it is away from the theological thought of the Consitución matter.
Atomic Democritus
The conclusion reached by the philosophers of this school is that reality can be represented as composed of two entities: atoms and vacuum.
Aristotle and Plato: The comment
The days, months, atmospheric phenomena were recorded in ancient times by many civilizations, but although there were comments that followed a method scientist, for these civilizations the sun and the stars were divine entities, lo cual alejó sus hallazgos de la observación científica.
Aristóteles llevó a cabo observaciones sistemáticas, sobre todo de sistemas biológicos, con una reflexión muy profunda sobre su funcionamiento. Y aunque no haya sido muy acertado según los parámetros modernos y conceptuales, su influencia se sigue sintiendo hoy.
Una buena referencia sobre Aristóteles y sus métodos de observación es el libro: Aristóteles y other animals. A philosophical reading of Aristotelian biology. PPU, Barcelona, \u200b\u200b1996. ISBN: 84-447-0561-7. 290 pp.
Plato's problem (from http://fueradelascavernas.blogspot.com/2007/12/en-el-siguiente-texto-se-explica-la.html )
"Because the truth is timeless (which is what is always true, as in the geometric theorems), outlining how to get that universally valid knowledge of objects in constant change.
Hence, the famous Platonic dualism between a world of intelligible ideas, eternal and immutable and a world of perceptible things, temporary and transformation.
Strictly science can only be intelligible, but then astronomy and physics would be doomed in advance (in fact the latter if it is precluded by Plato in the field of science.)
The only way to establish a science of the visible is found after this area of \u200b\u200bthe visible, any trace of intelligible, or in other words, trace elements purely rational in the context sensitive . This in turn requires specifying what makes a rational between the sensible.
Ultimately, the question is to understand what you mean applied to all things that affect our senses, and not just watch accumulating empirical data.
Einstein said, assuming a deeply Platonic position that the comprehensibility involves creating some order in the sensory impressions. And indeed, rational knowledge and order are terms never walk a long way from the other.
You can do science of the sensible world (light blue) only because it is ordered, or better, according to Plato, he has been ordered by the action of a Demiurge (in philosophy Greek matter can be ordered by a superior but not created, as in Jewish thought). "
The experiment of Eratosthenes
Through a series of measurements of projections of shadows from rods buried in the earth in two different places, and based on prior information, estimated that the land measuring 37.400 kms. In fact, measures 40.000 kms, so it was amazing precision.
Archimedes and pulleys
"Give me a fulcrum and lift the world"
After the Greeks: The Enlightenment
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
The first of the moderns. He was one of the predecessors of the Enlightenment, trying to understand the world away from the dominant theology. Shows that the Earth moves around the sun, and that is not the center of the universe.
Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626): specific instances, induction
John Locke (1632-1704): The Senses and the tabula rasa
Auguste Comte (1798-1857): Positivism
Issac Newton
His method shows the potential to gain knowledge by going beyond what is directly observable.
description and causality: Beyond Aristotle
gravitational forces, directly proportional to the mass of bodies, indirectly proportional to the distance between them.
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