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  ,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  , 1661 entered Cambridge  1667 fellow at trinity, 1669 professor of mathematics  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 re- enchantment 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