Outline (first day)

Course Notes:

Medieval Trajectories towards "Modernity" (Jones, ch. 1, Renaissance)
[the shift from a Medieval logic of complementarity, manifested in a synthesis between faith and reason, and between religious/moral authority and political theory - to a logic of dualism, characteristic of modernity, apparent first of all in the split between faith and reason and a concommitant split between religious/moral authority and "new" political theory {Dante, Marsiglio, Bodin - and Machiavelli}]

The Reformation and Protestantism (Jones, ch. 2)
[the shift from a Medieval optimism towards reason and human nature {grounded in the logic of complementarity} to an initial pessimism regarding human nature in Luther {grounded in the logic of dualism}]

Question: is capitalism supported by Protestantism, as Jones suggests?
Response 1: Herbert Butterfield
Response 2: Philosophy and Economic History (Senior Research Project, John Martella, '92)
Mr. Martella traces attitudes towards money and wealth back to Plato, Aristotle, early Christianity, and Aquinas, and then looks closely at the overturning of these attitudes in mercantilism and capitalism (as philosophically grounded by Adam Smith and John Locke).
This document will help us better understand the complex interactions between economic structures, on the one hand, and religious and philosophical frameworks on the other.

Science and the Scientific Method (Jones, ch. 3)
[ The "empirical" spirit {represented especially in such English figures as Francis Bacon} and the "mathematical" spirit {ultimately rooted in the Pythagoreans and Plato, and underlying the work of Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo} mingle into a "new science and new philosophy" - ones marked still again by a sharp {and, we will see, highly problematic}  opposition between mind-soul/body and the moral/religious domains of faith and individual freedom / the {now increasingly} mechanistic/deterministic/physical domains of the new science.]

[Additional web materials on the rise of natural science in the modern period
(from PHIL 377, History and Philosophy of Science)
II. The Origins of Modern Science: the Medieval and Early Modern Period, 1150-1600 - with a focus on

• the religious beliefs at work in the development of the foundations of modern natural science

historical developments - including the development of technologies that prove crucial to Western science and culture
III. The Origins of Modern Science: Cultural and Philosophical Contexts
• Margaret C. Jacob, The Cultural Meaning of the Scientific Revolution
• Opening comments: on the discontinuity between the Moderns and the Ancients/Medievals(where modern science for her rests squarely on the publication of Copernicus (1543) and Newton (1687). Her observations on the emergence of the "heroic narrative" regarding the progress of modern science (a narrative rooted in the mid-1700's) are also important.

Chapter 1: "Laying Claim to an Audience: The First Prophets of the New Science.";
Among these are Galileo and Francis Bacon. Her comments on the cultural - economic, social, political, and religious - background of "the Galilean Confrontation" are important correctives of the "heroic narrative " otherwise defining our presumptions about Galileo and the Church - presumptions which are both historically false and profoundly misleading with regard to our understanding of the possible relationship between science and religion as modes of knowledge.
IV. The Scientific Revolution: Copernicus - Newton
• Copernicus and Kepler: the Copernican Revolution as the Culmination of Pythagorean and Platonic Belief in Mathematics (Pine, ch. 4, with additional comments from Morris Kline and Thomas Kuhn): also includes first writing assignment.
• Descartes and Newton: Instrumentalism, Religion, and Politics as Shaping the Metaphysics and Epistemology of Newtonian Science - including conceptions of "gravity" and "absolute" space and time
 
(Also note the references in the Philosophy of Science Overview to Anthony Alioto's history of earlier science, including the role of experiment in Roman science, and the relationship between empiricism, mathematics, and experiment in the Middle Ages.)

Modern Philosophers:

• Hobbes - Discussion points, outline

Hobbes (Jones, ch. 4)
 
[Continental Idealism/Rationalism]
• Descartes (Jones, ch. 5)
• Overview notes on Spinoza (Spring, 1998)
• (More complete notes on) Spinoza (Jones, ch. 6)
• Overview notes on Leibniz (Jones, ch. 7)
[Anglo-American empiricism]
• Overview notes on Locke (Jones, ch. 8)
• Overview notes on Hume (Jones, ch. 10)

Kant as synthesizing these two traditions and thereby "finding a place of value in a world of fact" (the modern problem)

Nietzsche (Diverse Notes on Nietzsche, focusing on The Gay Science)

Final Writing Assignment (Kant, Nietzsche)

First Formal Writing: from Medieval complementarity to modern dualism

Second Formal Writing: Hobbes, Descartes

Third Writing Assignment: Spinoza, Leibniz/Locke, Hume//Kant - the contrasts between continental idealism and Anglo(-American) empiricism

Final Writing Assignment:  Hegel's System, Marx  andNietzsche's Critiques - "all that is solid melts into air"