RT info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis
T1 Raíces filosóficas del pensamiento científico
A1 Alonso Negrin, Rubén
A2 Grado En Física
AB The beginning of this work takes us back to the ancient Greece, where thefirst philosophers laid the foundations for rational thought, the logos. The Ionianphysicists, the Pythagoreans, Heraclitus and Parmenides, or the pluralists alreadyraised some of the great questions of philosophy and, in particular, some of thepoints that we will deal with, concerning the relationship between philosophy andmodern science: change, the qualities, the being…After the sophistic stage, Socrates put philosophy back on track, and it was oneof his pupils, Plato, who was responsible for developing the first greatphilosophical system of the West. With his theory of Ideas, Plato discoveredimmaterial being and thus metaphysics. He therefore opened up a new field ofknowledge, the implications of which were to serve not only the early Christians,for example St. Augustine, to develop a philosophy based on their faith. Even inthe scientific revolution, both in Galileo's mathematical universe and in the laws ofnature as understood by Newton and Descartes, it is difficult not to see a certainecho of Platonism.The next great system of Greek philosophy was carried out by one of Plato'spupils, Aristotle. The philosopher of Stagira went against his master,understanding the essence of being, not as something separate from the body, butinseparable from it. Being is not only matter, but matter and form, forming anindissoluble compound. The Stagirite understood that only in this way was itpossible to explain change, which had been, since Heraclitus and Parmenides, thegreat question of Greek thought. Aristotle will inspire medieval scholasticism,especially St. Thomas Aquinas, which will shape the Aristotelian-scholastic imageof the world, to which the scientific revolution will be so firmly opposed. However,as we shall see at the end of this paper, the thought that emerged as a result of thescientific revolution was not able to explain the world to the same extent as theAristotelian categories.Then Alexander the Great inaugurated the Hellenistic era. For the first time inthe history of the West, philosophy and natural science were separated. The former,with its capital in Athens, focused on man and how he should live his life. Stoics,Epicureans, Cynics and Skeptics were the great schools of the Hellenistic era. Thenatural sciences flourished in Alexandria, around the library and museum. Euclid,Aristarchus, Archimedes and Hipparchus are some of the great names of thisperiod.We leave the Greek world behind to plunge into Rome. Philosophically, it couldbe said that it was the Helad that conquered Rome; the Hellenistic and Platonistschools continued in Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism, which inspired the firstChristian philosophers. In strictly scientific matters, theoretical knowledge gaveway to practical knowledge, Ptolemy and Galen being the only new exceptions.The Christian Middle Ages began by uniting Platonism with faith in Christ, aswe have already mentioned. Patristics was followed by scholasticism, which foundits greatest exponent in St Thomas, and with him, Aristotelianism definitivelyfound its place in Christian thought. In the scientific sphere, from the 13th centuryonwards, interest in the natural sciences was reborn in Saint Albert the Great,Rogerius Bacon and Grosseteste, for example. In fact, we could say that modernscience found its foundations in the late Middle Ages. The medieval period wasbrought to a closing by William of Ockham, who dynamited traditionalmetaphysics, and with it the relationship between faith and reason on which muchof Christian philosophy had been based. He thus opened the way for what was tobecome modern science.The Renaissance is, above all, a period of change; literary, political and evenmagical interests. We also find some predecessors of the scientific method, such asLeonardo da Vinci and Telesius. On the other hand, the religious issues arisingfrom the Reformation will greatly influence the philosophy born in the scientificrevolution.The revolution, in its purely scientific aspect, ranges from Copernicus toNewton. However, in its philosophical aspect, on which we will focus, there arefour characters to take into account: Bacon, Galileo, Descartes and Newton.The first, although an advocate of the experimental method, can hardly beincluded among the fathers of modern science, since the complexity of his methodmakes it impracticable. However, the eminently practical character that, accordingto him, science should have, makes him a forerunner, and perhaps the spiritualfather of the industrial revolution.Galileo puts forward a new concept of experiment in which the mind, throughtheory, plays an active role in the process of observing nature. To this end, hepostulates a Universe written in mathematical language which allows its precisedescription, as well as the prediction of its behaviour. Hence, the modern scientificmethod was born, leaving behind all unquantifiable qualities and finality in nature.The founder of modern philosophy, René Descartes, begins his philosophy witha universal doubt that calls into question all knowledge. In this way, using hisfamous method, he constructed a philosophy of mechanistic character, in which thedualism between matter (understood as pure extension) and the mind (totallydistinct from matter) stands out.At last, Isaac Newton culminated the scientific revolution. He took up theprinciple of economy on which Ockham had based his philosophy and, in the lightof his theory of gravitation, he conceived a uniform nature indistinguishable inheaven and earth, and postulated a corpuscular world, extensive andimpenetrable, with no other quality than its motion and inertia. These corpusclesmove in obedience to the laws of nature, which ultimately have a theologicalfoundation.We will end by discussing some of the notions that the mechanistic worldviewneglects, such as teleology or form. We will see how these conceptions entail majorproblems which, nevertheless, Aristotelian philosophy manages to solve withsolvency
YR 2022
FD 2022
LK http://riull.ull.es/xmlui/handle/915/29124
UL http://riull.ull.es/xmlui/handle/915/29124
LA es
DS Repositorio institucional de la Universidad de La Laguna
RD 01-may-2024