3 - Science and metaphysics

Summary

In this chapter we discuss a few of the classic views of science that were popular from the time of the Renaissance until the early part of the twentieth century and then indicate some later changes in the conception of science. We return to a more complete overview of the current status of the philosophy of science as a retrospective in Chapter 25.

ORIGINS OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD

In the previous chapter we used Bacon as an example of a proponent of what developed into one important aspect of the modern scientific method. We also referred to Descartes as the father of modern philosophy and scientific reasoning. Galileo is often credited as being the first working scientist to apply modern scientific method in his investigations. (Chapter 6 will discuss the scientific writings and research of Galileo.) Although it is simplest for purposes of exposition to focus on the works of specific individuals such as Bacon, Descartes or Galileo to illustrate the rise of modern scientific thought and practice, these seventeenth-century thinkers were not the first to break with Aristotelian tradition. They did have predecessors. For instance, in the thirteenth century an experimental dimension for science was already advocated by the English Franciscan friar Roger Bacon (c. 1220–1292). And, as we shall see in more detail in Chapter 6, some of the fourteenth-century Ockhamists in Paris applied mathematical methods to the problem of motion and obtained results that contributed to the foundations of modern mechanics and of calculus.