Rozważania filozoficzne

The Scientific Revolution of the XVII century is a website devoted to developing a socio-political approach to the scientific revolution. Since Science is viewed as a social and political phenomenon like any other. Hence, pride of place is given to the social and political changes which formed the background to the Scientific Revolution: Martin Luther's Protestant Reformation, with its paramount educational reform. Europe's demographic growth and demographic migrations which determined an urban literate bourgeoisie.The Rise of Early Agrarian Capitalism, which brought about more literacy, and more bright minds.The secularization of thought and ways of life brought about by protestantism.Luther, Descartes and Bacon were all agreed on the fact that the human mind was enough to understand reality.Giordano Bruno's death at the stake on February 17, 1600, and his prior work, particularly in England did more to widespread Nicola di Cusa's ideas, Copernicus' heliocentric system, and a new approach to viewing reality free from the prejudices of Scholasticism. But more importantly, he shewed the world that the Roman Church was in actual fact a Papal Empire who used God and the other so-called 'divine' properties, such as the Holy Scriptures, the Holy Sacraments, anything that was seen as Holy to enhance its secular power, accumulate wealth to finance their own wars, such as the Crusades, and keep everybody under the yoke of the official clerical thought which had the effect to idioturn people imbeciletize people and prevent them from thinking with their minds. For Giordano Bruno, as well as for René Descartes, Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle, Pierre de Fermat, Blaise Pascal, Christiaan Huygens and so many other philosopers and scientists of the XVII century, it was quite clear that the enemy to fight was the Church.Given a background of extended schooling and increasing literacy, particularly in the Protestant Countries, e.g., England, The fight against the Papal Empire started vigorously. Francis Bacon, for instance, states unambiguosly that scholasticism and Aristotelianism were the fiercest enemies of knowledge. He attacks the Aristotelian system of syllogistic logic from the outset in his New Organon (Novum Organum). René Descartes pronounces loud and clear that the supreme instance to acquire knowledge was human thought (cogito, ergo sum), and declares that no knowledge is never definitely proved (As against divine knowledge) in his 'methodic doubt'.Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke, working together reformulate the constitution of matter and definitively do way with Empedocles famous 4 elements: earth, fire, water and air. They show that substances are much more complex than that and discover the first true elements, such as iron, magnesium, and so on. But most important, they debunk the scholastic myth that vacuum does not exist by developing a vacuum pump. By the way, they also debunked a scholastic fallacy which ran: "What is, exists. What is not, does not exist". Vacuum means the absence of everything and of anything. there is nothing in vacuum, nevertheless it exists.J.C. Garelli, M.D., Ph.D.Department of Epistemologyhttp://www.attachment.edu.arhttp://www.geocities.com/scirevolution