Scientific Thinking
and
the Cartesian / Newtonian
Paradigm of Thought
Komatra Chuengsatiansup
Outline of Presentation
 Sciences
and philosophy from historical
perspective
 Sciences from philosophical perspective
 Descartes and the foundation of modern
science
 Newton and the invention of scientific
empiricism
Outline of Presentation
 Science
and the Cartesian/Newtonian
paradigm
 Quantum physics and the new scientific
paradigm
 Post-modernism and the re-enchantment of
science
 Conclusion: One science or many?
Science and Philosophy From
Historical Perspective
 The
origins of science in the ancient worlds
 The divergence of science and philosophy
 The historicist theory of scientific rationality
 From Plato to Aristotle and beyond
 From renaissance to the Newtonian epoch
 Progress in science: evolutionary science
and normal science
Sciences From Philosophical
Perspective
 Ontological
and cosmological
foundation of scientific knowledge
 Scientific method and its
epistemological assumption
 Kuhn’s structure of scientific revolutions
 Feyerabend and scientific anarchist
 Logical empiricism and the philosophy
of modern science
Descartes: The Life and Work of
the Founder of Modern Philosophy

1596-1650,1618 served in the army,
engineer.
 Early work on harmony, proportion & ratio
 The World not published in 1633
 Discourse: Cartesian metaphysics
 Principle of philosophy (1644)
 Meditations on the first philosophy (1641)
 Died in Sweden under Queen Christina’s
patronage
Descartes and the Foundation of
Modern Science
 Descartes’
method: reductionism &
doubt
 Cogito ergo sum; I think therefore I am
 Cartesian dualism of body and mind
 Theory of vortices and the
disenchantment of nature
 Mathematical reality (geometry –
algebra) and materialistic worldview
Newton: The Life and Work of a
Revolutionary Scientist

1642-1727, 1661 entered Cambridge
 1667 fellow at trinity, 1669 professor of
mathematics
 1665-1666 formulating principia, but published
in 1687
 1689 member of convention parliament
 1699 master of the mint
 Never married and lived modestly
 Einstein: greatest achievement a man can
make
Newton and the Invention of
Scientific Empiricism
 The
life and work of Isaac Newton
 Mathematics and the science of
precision
 Light and optics
 Motion and gravitation
 Theistic materialism
 Knowable law of god’s creation
Newton’s Material World
“It seems probable to me that god in the
beginning formed matter in solid,
massy, hard, impenetrable, movable
particles… and that these primitive
particles being solids, are incomparably
harder than any porous bodies
compounded of them… no ordinary
power being able to divide what god
himself made one in the first creation”
Science and the
Cartesian/Newtonian Paradigm
 Materialism
and determinism
 Reductionistic and analytical reasoning
 Quantitative and the science of
measurement
 Androcentrism
 The claim of objectivity and universalism
 Weighing contributions and drawbacks
Quantum Physics and the
New Scientific Paradigm
 The
dissolution of matter and energy
 Observers and the observed
 The problems of space and time
 The indeterminacy of complexity
 The Tao of physics
 New biology and the science of life
Post-modernism and
the Re-enchantment of Science
 Knowledge
and power
 Holism, system theory and emergent
property
 Pluralism and uncertainty
 The good, the aesthetics, and the
rightness
 The new science and the reenchantment of life
Conclusion:
One Science or Many?
 Back
to Socrates: know how we know
before know what we know
 Is an absolute truth possible? A
salamanders’ knowledge of the cosmos
 Feyerabend: everything goes
 When east meets west: knowledge in
inner space
 The multiple realities of human
existence and the many sciences