Tweet
Originally posted by Pierre
View Post
Other philosophers who discussed their opinions on what made up matter did put down these ideas but their works were lost to us except for small excerpts or synopsis that were copied down in encyclopedias like Pliny the Elder's "Natural History" (you remember him - he was the savant and Roman Admiral, who was killed by the fumes from Mt. Vesuvius in the eruption of 79 A.D. that destroyed Pompeii and Herculenium - not to be confused with his nephew Pliny the Younger who left us an account of his Uncle's death in his surviving letters).
Socrates left no writings. His teachings (as they are) are found in the books of Plato, his greatest student, and in those of Xenophon the Athenian soldier and historian (hero of the "Anabasis"). Historians using these two sources, as well as Aristophanes' play "The Clouds" and a passage in Thucydides' "History of the Peloponnesian War" to figure out what Socrates actually said, as they ascribe the ideas given in Plato's works like "The Symposium" and "The Republic" as mostly Plato's, but Xenophon makes Socrates seem more accessible on a lower level. What both do show is Socrates creation of the "question and answer" method now called after him:
"The Socratic Method". It was a great step forward, as it was to arrive at the truth - though many have bent it to arrive at their own concepts of the truth. Socrates himself has been accused of this in some of Plato's dialogs, but these may be Plato himself doing it. After all, Plato does have Socrates talk of the need for a "philosopher king" to rule in "The Republic", but it seems to many scholars that this is Plato's belated attempt at wish fulfillment that Socrates should have had such a post, rather than being tried and condemned by Athens and put to death with hemlock.
Rene Descartes was one of several figures in the early 17th Century who revolutionized scientific curiosity and method. His chief is the "Critique of Pure Reason", which showed how to properly reason out a problem, but in particular aimed at application to scientific efforts. Still he and his contemporaries (Sir Francis Bacon comes to mind) were also into other fields. Bacon was Lord Chancellor of England for awhile, until he was impeached and removed for corruption in the reign of King James I of England and Vi of Scotland (this was before the unification of Scotland and England in 1707). Bacon did conduct scientific experiments on his own, and died from a severe cold contracted when he tried to use snow in a 17th Century attempt at food refrigeration (I kid you not on that!). Others in the movement were Giordano Bruno (who fell under the disapproval of the Inquisition and was burned at the stake in 1600) and Galileo (who ended up under house arrest for insisting that Copernicus' theory of a sun centered solar system was proved by his own findings). Descartes concentrated on mathematics, pointing out that it gave the firmest and surest background to proving all issues in science, and basically he connects the ancient mathematicians to modern math by giving the feet to modern algebra. However, like Bacon he had other abilities, and he would die in Stockholm in the 1630s when he went there to be an advisor to Queen Christina.
Why you put Jean-Paul Sartre on the three choices you gave is anyone's guess! Sartre, the father of the movement of "existentialism" was a writer, not (as far as I recall) a scientist. He wrote a novel or two also (most notably "Nausea"). He also was a bit too fond of the left of center views of the students of his period - and frequently supported the Soviet Union in it's actions, as opposed to the U.S. Perhaps because you are French (at least I believe so) you think highly of him, but "existentialism" was already on the decline during the last decade or so of Sartre's life.
My answer is not going to please you, and I suspect it is too long, and really not on the topic of the GogMagog Letter, but you insisted on responding to an earlier comment of mine so I had to offer a little response. No doubt you will tear it apart - or try to do so.
Jeff
Comment