Modern Philosophy: Origins, Scientific Impact, and Key Currents
Modern Philosophy: 15th to 18th Centuries
From the 15th century, a process of historical, social, and cultural change occurred in Europe, leading to what is known as modernity. Modern thought emerged in open confrontation with medieval religious culture, radically changing attitudes toward reality and the human relationship with it.
The Scientific Revolution (16th and 17th Centuries)
The Scientific Revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries marked the definitive break with the Greco-Medieval worldview. The new science provided a picture of the universe distinct from the medieval one, building upon the recovery of Greek thinkers such as Pythagoras, Archimedes, and Euclid. Key elements of the new science were:
- Heliocentrism: The Sun became the center of the universe, dethroning humanity from its special cosmic position.
- Mechanism: Reality was conceived as a perfect machine, allowing for precise knowledge of its elements and operational laws. The focus shifted from understanding ‘why’ things happen to ‘how’ they happen.
- Mathematization of Reality: This new scientific methodology provided a quantitative view of reality, though this approach no longer sought the basic essentials and essence of reality.
- Experimentation: Emphasizing the relationship between theory and practice, knowledge now sought not only to understand but also to dominate and transform nature. This new Renaissance science aimed to establish as law what reason, through mathematics, revealed as real, even if the senses suggested otherwise.
This period restored the prominence and autonomy of reason, lost during the Middle Ages, and opened discussions on the scope of human knowledge. This problem was compounded by the new conception of science, which began the separation between philosophy and science. This raised a new question for modern thinkers: Can philosophy be a science? If not, what is its new role?
New Directions in Philosophy (From the 17th Century)
From the 17th century, philosophical inquiry shifted away from reality itself, focusing instead on the critical analysis of how to access it. This new stage of philosophy was characterized by the autonomy of reason over religious belief, and by the pursuit of a method to advance philosophy as science had advanced. The three main streams were:
- Rationalism (Descartes): Advocated total confidence in reason’s possibilities, coupled with a skepticism towards the senses. From a set of innate ideas and mathematical deduction, reason, without the aid of experience, could discover the fabric of reality. This led to the conception of philosophy as knowledge capable of undoubted certainty in all areas of reality. However, this overconfidence sometimes led to a dogmatic attitude. Its model of science was mathematics.
- British Empiricism (Hume): Posited that the origin and value of knowledge depend on empirical data perceived through the senses. Reason could only function based on the data provided by the senses. With this view, human knowledge lost its status as absolute truth, becoming merely probable, which often led to skepticism.
- Transcendental Idealism (Kant): Surpassed previous positions by offering a more comprehensive account of knowledge. Kant argued that knowledge must be based on sensory experience, as empiricism claimed. However, not everything originates from experience; our mind possesses a specific structure that shapes how we perceive reality, thus determining everything we know. The result is that we do not know things as they are ‘in themselves’ (noumena), but rather as they appear to us, determined and conditioned by our minds (phenomena).