General Philosophy
Dr Peter Millican, Hertford College
Lectures 1 and 2:
Historical Background
What is “General Philosophy”?
Some central issues of epistemology
(“What can we know?”) and metaphysics
(“What is the nature of things?”).
Illustrates how philosophy is done: types
of arguments, methods of enquiry etc.
Historical focus: all but one of the topics
(Knowledge) are introduced through the
writings of “Classical” philosophers of the
17th and 18th centuries.
2
Why Study Philosophy Historically?
How the agenda got set: when and why did
these problems become important?
Learning the labels: “Cartesian dualism”,
“Lockean veil of perception”, “Berkeleian
idealism”, “Berkeleian instrumentalism”,
“Humean compatibilism”, “Cartesian” or
“Humean” scepticism etc.
Great original thinkers, writing for a general
audience: so their ideas are profound, and
they don’t take too much for granted.
3
The Value of Historical Perspective
4
Philosophical ideas tend to have broad and
deep interconnections.
Studying classic “battles of ideas” enables
us to view these interconnections in context
and with the perspective of history.
Many classic themes recur throughout the
history of thought, sometimes hidden under
the surface of contemporary debate.
Ignoring the past can make us slaves of
fashion, and blinker us to other options.
The Topics (1)
Scepticism: Descartes’ evil genius,
Locke’s veil of perception
Knowledge: Responding to scepticism
Perception: Locke’s representative
theory of perception, Berkeley’s criticisms
Primary and secondary qualities: Boyle
and Locke’s theory, Berkeley’s criticisms
Induction: Hume’s sceptical argument,
and his denial that nature is “intelligible”
5
The Topics (2)
Free Will: Hobbes’ and Hume’s
compatibilism, and their naturalistic view of
man as part of nature
Mind and Body: Descartes’ dualism,
various philosophers on the limited powers
of matter and their religious implications
Personal Identity: Locke’s attempt to
ground this independently of “spiritual
substance”
6
The Birth of Philosophy
The ancient Greeks, distinctively,
aimed for rational understanding
independent of religious tradition.
Many different philosophers and “schools”:
– Various “Pre-Socratics” (c. 600 - 400 BC)
– Plato and his Academy (387 BC -)
– Aristotle (pictured) and his Lyceum (335 BC -)
– Pyrrhonian sceptics (c. 320 BC -)
– Epicureans (c. 307 BC -)
– Stoics (c. 300 BC -)
7
The Institution of Scholasticism
Roman Empire became Christianised:
– Pagan temples and libraries destroyed 391 AD;
– Non-Christian “schools” closed down 529 AD.
Plato and Aristotle adopted:
– Christian Platonism (e.g. Augustine 354-430)
– Christian Aristotelianism (e.g. Aquinas 1225-74)
The Christian Aristotelian worldview became
dominant in the medieval monastic schools,
hence “Scholasticism”.
8
Fixed Stars
Saturn
Jupiter
Mars
Sun
Venus
Mercury
Moon
Fire
Air
Water
& Earth
9
4
Aristotle’s Universe
Rediscovery of the Classics
Ancient texts survived in the Byzantine
Empire, or in the Arabic world.
– Manuscripts brought West in flight from Ottoman
Turks (Constantinople fell 1453), fostered the
development of Humanism in Renaissance Italy.
Printing (invented 1450) gave them much
wider circulation, e.g.:
– Lucretius (rediscovered 1417, printed 1486)
– Sextus Empiricus (translated into Latin 1562)
10
Upheaval and Instability
Many factors contributed to Western
instability in the period 1500-1650, e.g.:
– growth of population and trade;
– discovery of the New World (America etc.);
– consequent economic disruption;
– realisation that ancient maps etc. were wrong;
– suggestions of cultural relativity;
– technology of gunpowder and consequent
centralisation of power.
11
The
Hereford
“Mappa
Mundi”
(c. 1290)
based on the writings
of Orosius, a pupil of
Saint Augustine, part
of a compendium of
knowledge to refute
the pagans
12
The Reformation
The Reformation added to this crisis:
– Luther rebelled against the Church of Rome,
starting in 1517;
– Many parts of Europe (especially in the North)
became Protestant;
– Savage wars throughout Europe arising from
religious differences (e.g. Thirty Years’ War
1618-48, English Civil War 1639-51);
– Peace “of exhaustion” at Westphalia, 1648 led
to greater religious toleration.
13
The Problem of the Criterion
A sceptical problem raised by Sextus
Empiricus in his Outlines of Pyrrhonism:
How can any criterion of reliable knowledge
be chosen, unless we already have some
reliable criterion for making that choice?
– Roman Catholics appeal to tradition (Church,
Bible, Aristotle); Protestants appeal to the
believer’s personal response to the Bible;
– How to know who is right? (Maybe neither?!)
14
Aristotelian Science
Elements and Natural Motions
– Four elements: fire, air, water, and earth.
– Fire/air naturally move upwards, water/earth
downwards, each seeking its natural place.
– Heavier things fall faster, in proportion to weight.
(Physics, IV 8)
A Teleological Physics
– Strivings, horror of a vacuum etc.
– Everything strives towards the eternal, hence
heavenly bodies move in circles, and must be
made of a fifth element, aether.
15
Intelligibility, or Empty “Explanation”?
“Why does water rise up a siphon pipe?”
“Because Nature abhors
a vacuum.”
“Why does opium
make one sleep?”
“Because it contains a
dormitive virtue, whose
nature is to make the
senses soporific.”
Molière (1673)
16
Galileo’s Experiments
Aristotle couldn’t explain:
– the flight of a cannonball;
– a sledge sliding on flat ice;
– water dripping from a gutter.
Galileo was reported (by Viviani) to have
performed another critical experiment:
– dropping a large and a small ball together from
the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Contrary to
Aristotle, they fell at similar speeds.
17
Galileo’s Telescope
The telescope was invented in Holland in
1608, and Galileo made his own in 1609.
What he saw with it refuted Aristotle’s
cosmology:
– Mountains and valleys on the moon;
– Four moons orbiting around Jupiter;
– Innumerable stars too dim for the naked eye;
– Phases of Venus, sometimes “full” (implying that
it is then on the opposite side of the Sun).
18
Venus as
considered
by Ptolemy
Sun
Venus
Earth
14
From Final to Efficient Causes
Aristotelian science was based on
purposes, or “final” causation:
– Things strive to reach their natural place, or to
avoid abhorrent situations (e.g. a vacuum);
Galileo preferred “efficient” causation:
– The outcome depends on where the causal
sequence happens to lead.
– Matter doesn’t strive; it is inert, remaining in
its state of motion or rest unless acted on.
20
The “Mechanical Philosophy”
The paradigm of efficient causation is via
mechanical contact:
– Interaction between contiguous particles of
matter by pressure and impact.
Compared with pseudo-explanations
involving “occult” qualities (horror of a
vacuum, dormitive virtue etc.), this seems:
– genuinely explanatory;
– genuinely intelligible.
21
Inertia and the Orbiting Heavens
Thus Galileo claimed, against Aristotle:
– Matter does not “strive”.
– Left to itself matter is “inert”: it continues in a
uniform state of rest or motion until acted
upon by a force (e.g. pushed along).
– The heavenly bodies are not composed of a
special “aether”, but of ordinary matter, and
therefore subject to the same laws.
BUT: why then does the Moon orbit the
Earth, and the planets orbit the Sun?
22
The Father of Modern Philosophy
Attacks Aristotelian tradition
using the sceptical problem
of the criterion;
Builds on Galileo’s
mechanical philosophy
grounding it on a theory of
matter’s “essence”;
Makes room for mind
23
as an “essence” radically
distinct from matter (thus
effectively removing it from
physical science).
Descartes – Epistemology
Seeks reliable anti-sceptical basis for
knowledge, not appealing to authority:
– “I think therefore I am”, provides a first
example of something known, and reveals
what is needed: clear and distinct perception.
– Then prove clearly and distinctly that the idea
of God implies a perfect cause: i.e. God.
– A perfect God cannot deceive, so our faculties
must be reliable if used properly.
– Hence the importance of Descartes’ Method.
24
Descartes – Science
Descartes was a major natural philosopher:
– First to explain the rainbow in detail;
– Discovered co-ordinate geometry;
– Suggested circulation of the blood;
– Concluded that the Earth orbits the Sun.
His most important intellectual legacy:
The ideal of a mechanistic science of the world,
based on the simple mathematical properties of
extended matter.
25
Descartes and Essences
The real qualities of matter follow from its
essence, simple geometrical extension.
– This essence, known through God-given innate
ideas, implies mathematical laws of motion.
– Bodies are passive, remaining in the same
state (inertia) until a force is applied.
– Qualities perceived by the senses (Locke’s
“secondary qualities”) are observer-dependent.
Mind is a distinct, active immaterial
substance, whose essence is thinking.
26
Descartes’ Physics
Since matter’s essence is extension, nonmaterial extension is impossible. Thus:
– The physical world is a plenum (no vacuum);
– All motion must take the form of circuits of
matter within the plenum.
– This can be expected to give rise to vortices,
circular motions like whirlpools.
– A vortex can explain why the planets orbit the
Sun without shooting off under inertia.
27
The Monster of Malmesbury
(and Magdalen Hall = Hertford College!)
Hobbes denies
– immaterial substance;
– witchcraft;
– reliance on revelation.
Hobbes asserts
– universal determinism;
– obedience to sovereign
in religion and morals.
28
Hobbes’
Leviathan (1651)
In the state of
nature, the life of
man is ‘solitary,
poore, nasty,
brutish and short’.
The only solution
is absolute
sovereignty.
29
Hobbes’ Materialism
Hobbes, like Descartes, is a plenist, but he
recognises only material substance, and does
so on logical grounds:
“When men make a name of two Names, whose
significations are contradictory and inconsistent”,
the result is “but insignificant sounds”, “as this
name, an incorporeall body, or (which is all one) an
incorporeall substance”.
Leviathan ch. 4
So Descartes’ supposed mental “immaterial
substance” is a contradiction in terms!
30
Hobbes’ Compatibilism
Hobbes is the first classic compatibilist, who
takes determinism (i.e. all that happens is
completely determined by causal laws) to
be fully compatible with genuine free will.
“LIBERTY, or FREEDOME, signifieth (properly) the
absence of Opposition (by Opposition, I mean
externall Impediments of motion;) … A FREEMAN, is he, that in those things, which by his
strength and wit he is able to do, is not hindred
to doe what he has a will to.”
31
Leviathan ch. 21
Materialism and Atheism
Hence for Hobbes, all that exists is material,
even God, and everything is determined.
Many took Hobbes to be an atheist.
– In 1666 Parliament cited his “atheism” as
probable cause of the plague and fire of London!
– His “Pernicious” books were publicly burned in
Oxford in 1683, because of their “Damnable
Doctrines … false, seditious, and impious, and
most of them … also Heretical and Blasphemous
… and destructive of all Government”.
32
The Evils of “Hobbism”
In 1668, Daniel Scargill of Corpus Christi
College, Cambridge was expelled. In his
public recantation, he confessed:
“I have lately vented and publickly asserted …
divers wicked, blasphemous, and Atheistical
positions … professing that I gloried to be an
Hobbist and an Atheist … Agreeably unto
which principles I have lived in great
licentiousness, swearing rashly, drinking
intemperately … corrupting others …”
33
Opposing Materialism
The main argument against Hobbist
materialism was to insist on the limited powers
of “brute matter”, which:
– is necessarily passive or inert (as demonstrated by
the phenomenon of inertia);
– in particular, cannot possibly give rise to mental
activity such as perception or thought.
This point was pressed by Ward (1656), More
(1659), Stillingfleet (1662), Tenison (1670),
Cudworth (1678), Glanvill (1682), Locke (1690).
34
Boyle’s Corpuscularianism
Though Hobbist materialism
was anathema, physical
mechanism thrived in England:
– Robert Boyle, with an interest in
chemistry and based in Oxford,
speculated that material
substances are composed of imperceptible
“corpuscles” made of “universal matter”. His
term “corpuscularianism” conveniently avoided
the atheistic associations of ancient “atomism”
35
Atoms and the Void
Boyle’s universal matter is both extended
and impenetrable, so unlike Descartes he
can draw a distinction between:
– impenetrable extension (i.e. matter)
– penetrable extension (i.e. empty space)
He retains Descartes’ primary-secondary
quality distinction: observable “secondary”
qualities of substances flow from how the
corpuscles are physically arranged.
36
Meanwhile,
in the Heavens …
In 1627 Johannes Kepler published tables
enabling the calculation of planetary positions
to an accuracy which turned out to be over
1000 times better than any previous method.
Kepler’s method is based on the hypothesis
that each planet moves in an ellipse around
the Sun (which is at one “focus” of the ellipse).
The method’s sheer accuracy led over time to
general acceptance of that hypothesis.
37
Newtonian Physics
Isaac Newton took
Descartes’ concept of
inertia, and Boyle’s theory
of “atoms and the void”, but
postulated a force of gravity acting through it.
– If gravity acts in inverse proportion to the square
of the distance between two objects, and bodies
accelerate in proportion to the total force acting
on them, then the elliptical motion of the planets
around the Sun can be elegantly explained.
38
Refuting Aristotle and Descartes
Newton’s theory could also predict – using
the very same equations – the motion of
cannonballs etc. on Earth.
– Another nail in the coffin of the Aristotelian
supposition that heavenly bodies act differently.
In his Philosophiae Naturalis Principia
Mathematica (1687), Newton also proved
mathematical results indicating that a vortex
could not possibly generate elliptical motion.
– Descartes’ theory was thereby discredited.
39
Gravitation and Intelligibility
Newtonian gravity acts at a distance with
no intermediate mechanical connexion.
– But this is deeply “unintelligible”.
– Descartes had objected to the idea of gravity
as “occult”: one body would have to “know”
where the other was to move towards it.
– Many Newtonians took the operation of
gravity to be proof of divine action, a new
resource against Hobbist materialism.
– Newton took a more instrumentalist attitude.
40
Newton’s Methodological
Instrumentalism
Newton’s public response to the objection:
“Hypotheses non fingo”
– “I feign no hypotheses”: there’s no obligation to
invent speculations about how gravity operates
(at least until more evidence comes to light
giving a basis for more than mere hypothesis).
– If the gravitational equations (etc.) correctly
describe the observed behaviour of objects,
then that theory should be accepted whatever
the unperceived underlying reality might be.
41
John Locke
Established “British
Empiricist” tradition;
Hugely influential also in
political philosophy;
Christ Church, 1652-84;
Essay concerning
Human Understanding
and Two Treatises of
Government, 1690.
42
Locke and Corpuscularianism
Locke’s Essay took Boyle’s “corpuscularian
hypothesis” as the best available:
– Boyle’s “universal matter” becomes “substance
in general”; “impenetrability” becomes “solidity”.
– Underlying substance has primary qualities:
shape, size, movement etc., texture, solidity.
– Secondary qualities (e.g. colour, smell, taste) are
powers to cause ideas in us.
– Primary qualities in objects resemble our ideas
of them; secondary qualities do not.
43
Empiricism and Essences
Locke is empiricist, and modest …
44
– All our ideas are derived from experience, so
we can’t rely on Cartesian “innate ideas”.
– (Virtually) all knowledge of the world comes
from experience, and hence must be tentative.
– We presume a “real essence”: an underlying
structure giving rise to the observed properties
of substances, and their similarity.
– However we have to make do with relying on
“nominal essence”: the observable properties
by which we identify and sort things.
Locke’s Probabilism
Reason is a perceptual faculty: rational
argument involves perceiving truths and
inferential connexions.
– Demonstration is when a sequence of intuitive
connexions leads from premise to conclusion.
But reason does not operate only through
logical demonstration, yielding certainty:
– Reason can also perceive probable
connexions, which can be sequenced
together to generate probable reasoning.
45
Locke’s Rationalism
Despite his epistemological modesty, Locke
seems committed to an ideal of intelligibility:
– “if we could discover the … Texture [etc.] … of
the minute Constituent parts of … Bodies, we
should know without Trial several of their
Operations …” (Essay IV iii 25)
– The existence of God is provable with certainty,
since “it is as impossible that incogitative Matter
should produce a cogitative Being, as that
nothing … should produce … Matter.” (IV x 11)
46
Thinking Matter and Inertness
But Locke speculated that God could, if he
wished, “superadd” thought to matter.
– Provoked great hostility, opponents arguing
that thought is an “active” power, requiring an
immaterial soul rather than brute matter.
– Matter only has primary qualities and what
directly flows from them.
– Matter is clearly “passive” or “inert”, as
indicated by phenomenon of inertia.
– If matter could think, what of immortality?
47
Locke on Personal Identity
Agnosticism about substances gave Locke
a particular problem with personal identity.
– Our experience gives us no insight into the
nature of mental “substance”, only its activity.
– Analogy with plants suggests an organism’s
identity is not tied to its constituent substance.
– The notion of personal identity is “forensic”:
vital in issues of morality and responsibility.
Locke attempts to ground this vital notion
in consciousness and memory.
48
The Powers of Matter
Most were deeply unhappy with a view of man
that was compatible with materialism, which
they saw as atheistical and mortalist.
Again, their main argument was that matter is
passive and inert, so it cannot perceive or think
(Descartes, Cudworth etc.), or attract gravitationally (various Newtonians); hence there must
be a non-material substance with these effects.
Occasionalism and Immaterialism pushed this
line of thought much further …
49
Nicolas Malebranche
The leading Cartesian of
the late 17th century.
Often now ignored, but
influential in England as
well as his native France.
Built on the claim of matter’s inertness,
developing the theory of occasionalism.
Though considered a “rationalist”, he was a
major influence on the “empiricist” Berkeley.
50
Malebranche and Causation
Matter is inert, and has no causal impact
on the world; the only cause is God.
– A real cause must necessitate its effect, but we
can conceive any physical “cause” occurring
without its “effect”, so it can’t be a real cause.
– Only the will of an omnipotent Being can truly
necessitate an effect in this sense.
– God sustains the world, in effect re-creating it
from moment to moment (as Descartes taught),
hence again He brings everything about.
51
Malebranche’s Occasionalism
Malebranche’s theory implies that physical
objects are not real causes.
– Instead they are “occasional” causes: when
one billiard ball hits another, this provides the
occasion for God to cause the second to move
(by re-creating it in a sequence of positions).
– God also creates the visual perceptions in our
mind corresponding to this physical reality.
– But then why not do away with the physical
reality entirely, as it seems to play no role?
52
George Berkeley
Irish Anglican, 1685-1753,
buried in Christ Church.
“British empiricist”, but
closer to Malebranche than
to either Locke or Hume.
Immaterialism: the only things that exist are
(active) spirits and (passive) “ideas”.
God orchestrates our ideas, so objects in the
world appear in an orderly fashion.
53
Berkeley’s Immaterialism
Berkeley’s immaterialism is essentially
occasionalism without the material world.
But he uses a different set of arguments,
appealing to perception and meaningempiricism rather than to metaphysics:
– Combines Lockean principle that only ideas are
immediately perceived, with plain man’s belief
that trees etc. are immediately perceived;
– Denies intelligibility of perceived objects (or
anything resembling them) existing unperceived.
54
Perception According to Locke
Idea in the mind
Material object
(directly perceived) (cause of the idea)
The “Veil of perception” problem: how can we
know whether there is a real material object?
55
Perception According to Berkeley
Idea in the mind = the tree
(directly perceived; caused by God)
No veil of perception problem, because what we
directly perceive (i.e. the idea) is the tree.
56
Berkeley on Primary and
Secondary Qualities
We can be mistaken about PQs just as we
can about SQs: they too are in the mind.
All ideas are derived from experience, hence
our ideas of PQs (e.g. shape) are infused
with those of the sensory SQs by which we
perceive them (e.g. a colour that fills the
space). PQs without SQs are inconceivable.
We cannot make any sense of something
non-mental resembling an idea.
57
Berkeley’s Instrumentalism
Immaterialism might seem to undermine
physical science, but Berkeley (following
Newton) advocated instrumentalism:
– The aim of science is to discover “laws” that
generate true predictions about phenomena.
– It is irrelevant whether the theoretical entities
(e.g. forces) invoked have any real existence.
– God benevolently arranges the observed
phenomena to follow these patterns, as “signs”
to enable us to direct our lives.
58
David Hume, The Great Infidel
Scottish, 1711-76
Treatise of Human
Nature 1739
Essays (various) 1741Enquiries concerning
Human Understanding
1748, and Principles of
Morals 1751
Dialogues Concerning
Natural Religion 1779
59
Building on Newton and Locke
Newtonianism
– Newton provides a model of good science,
modestly aiming “to reduce the principles,
productive of natural phenomena, to a greater
simplicity, and to resolve the many particular
effects into a few general causes”. (E 4.12)
Probabilism
– Locke is right to emphasise probability rather
than demonstration as the basis for our
discovery of truths about the world. BUT …
60
Hume on Mechanical Causation
Suppose we see a white billiard ball moving
towards a red one and colliding with it. Why
do we expect the red one to move?
Imagine Adam, newly created by God, trying
to envisage what would happen: how could
be possibly have any idea at all in advance
of experience?
The “intelligibility” of mechanical causation
is just an illusion, engendered by familiarity.
61
Science and Intelligibility
Methodological Instrumentalism
– All causation is “unintelligible”: we don’t really
understand why anything causes anything.
– Malebranche and Berkeley had the right idea
about natural causes: there is no intelligible
connexion between cause and effect, so we
must view all “natural laws” instrumentally
(and not just Newton’s law of gravitation).
– But in Hume’s universe there’s no role for
God: it’s a sort of atheistic occasionalism!
62
Hume on Induction
Does experience of impacting billiard balls
give me a good reason for expecting the red
ball to move after the collision?
If so, I must have a good reason for taking
my past experience as a guide to the future.
But resemblance of the future to the past isn’t
self-evident, and I can’t know it through the
senses. Nor can it be proved logically, while
appealing to experience to support it would
be “begging the question”: arguing in a circle.
63
Humean “Reason”
Against Lockean “Rationalistic Probabilism”
– Lack of “intelligibility” does not merely imply that
our judgements about the world are uncertain;
we cannot even claim to have any rational
grasp of, or insight into, probable connexions.
The Foundation of Induction
– Scientific (like all empirical) reasoning is
founded not on insight, but on a brute
assumption that the future will resemble the
past, for which no solid basis can be given.
64
Man’s Place in Nature
Not “Made in God’s Image”
– Our Reason is a natural faculty (rather than any
sort of godlike insight). There’s no basis for
thinking of man as supernaturally privileged;
instead, he should be viewed as part of the
natural world, alongside the beasts.
A Subject of Empirical Study
– The human world, like the natural world, can be
known only through observation, experiment,
systematisation and generalisation.
65
Hume on Free Will
Hume, like Hobbes, is a compatibilist, seeing
moral freedom as compatible with determinism.
Human actions are necessary in the same
sense as material interactions (indeed we can
only understand necessity in one way, based on
our own habits of prediction).
Free will is simply having the power to act as
our will dictates.
This doesn’t undermine moral responsibility
because morality is based on sentiment.
66
The Elephant in the Room
Theological concerns underlie
most philosophy over this period.
In the Medieval picture, things
operate through “natures” and purposes laid
down by God. Moving from an Aristotelian to a
mechanical model of nature removes the
purposes, and threatens an atheistic universe.
Religious disagreement also undermines
appeal to traditional authority – encouraging a
search for something to take its place.
67
A (Very Simplistic) “Big Picture”
Medieval
Early
Modern
68
Physics
Morals
Politics
Governed
by natural
motions
Revealed
truth and
natural law
King is
divinely
ordained
Inert matter, Revelation? Natural right?
mechanical
Reason?
Reason?
causation, Moral sense?
Contract?
forces
Feeling?
Raw power?
In the Wake of Mechanistic Science
The world differs radically from how it appears:
our best theory attributes primary qualities to
bodies, with secondary qualities explained
through a representative theory of perception.
This invites scepticism: if we can’t trust our
natural faculties to yield truth directly, then how
can we know what things are really like?
If the actions of body are explained mechanically, then how can mind fit in? The relation
between them seems completely mysterious.
69
Moreover a completely mechanical account of
the actions of body implies that our behaviour
is determined. What then of free will, and how
can divine punishment be justified?
Reward or punishment relies on the premise of
personal identity over time, and the afterlife
requires this to withstand bodily dissolution.
How can we make sense of this, so as to
safeguard both religion and morality?
If Hume is right, we can’t. And our attempts to
make sense of the world are anyway doomed
by the limits of our faculties, as shown by our
inability
to
justify
even
basic
induction.
70
Immanuel Kant (1783)
Hume has to be wrong,
because we have clear
examples of “synthetic a
priori” knowledge: truths
about the world knowable independently of
experience, that we see had to be that way:
71
– Metaphysical principles (e.g. universal causation)
– Euclidean geometry (e.g. Pythagoras’ theorem)
– Newtonian mechanics (e.g. conservation of
momentum).
Hume’s Triumph!
Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859)
– We are evolved from animals, part of nature.
Einstein’s General Relativity (1915)
– Space is gravitationally “curved”.
– So Euclid’s axioms probably aren’t true, and
they’re certainly not knowable a priori.
Quantum Mechanics (1925)
72
– Fundamental particles don’t work at all as we
(or Newton) would have expected: their
behaviour is describable, but not “intelligible”.
A Note from our Sponsors …
The Introduction to my
Oxford World’s Classics
edition of Hume’s Enquiry
gives more detail on all of
this, together with reference
material summarising
philosophers’ views etc.
All profits to Oxford University Press,
which is a department of the University!
73
A Note from our Sponsors …
The Introduction to my
Oxford World’s Classics
edition of Hume’s Enquiry
gives more detail on all of
this, together with reference
material summarising
philosophers’ views etc.
All profits to Oxford University Press,
which is a department of the University!
74
A Note from our Sponsors …
The Introduction to my
Oxford World’s Classics
edition of Hume’s Enquiry
gives more detail on all of
this, together with reference
material summarising
philosophers’ views etc.
All profits to Oxford University Press,
which is a department of the University!
75