This allowed the Catholic Church to present the idea that Earth was special because it was God's greatest creation. Thus, the sun, stars, and planets worked for the Earth and not the other way around. The Earth stayed completely still at the center of the universe and was surrounded by less important celestial bodies that did not receive as much of God's grace. Since Aristotelian philosophy fit so nicely within Christian doctrine, it was adopted and held as truth for hundreds of years, until late into the Middle Ages. However, there was a drastic and radical change in the concept of the formation of the Universe at the dawn of the Renaissance. As more and more of the Church's truths were challenged during the Scientific Revolution of the 14th and 15th centuries in Europe, it was only a matter of time before Aristotelian philosophy was placed under question. The first and probably most influential mind in the re-formulation of the universe was Nicolaus Copernicus. This astronomer of the 14th century, formulated his own version of the construction of the universe that actually placed the sun at the center of the solar system. This radical idea disturbed the church and brought great backlash from Catholic officials, but eventually gained speed within the budding scientific community. In his model, also known as heliocentrism, the sun was the center of the solar system, and the Earth rotated around it with the other...
This upset Catholic officials based on the idea that it presented Earth as just another copy of the other planets, taking away the uniqueness which they believe was attributed to it based on God's grace. Galileo Galilei, and Italian mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who had previously made significant improvements on the telescope which then allowed him to look into the heavens with a whole new and scientific eye. Galileo made a significant discovery when he saw that Jupiter had moons orbiting it, thus proving that the Earth was not the complete center of the universe. This helped give great weight to the Copernican theory of heliocentrism like no other discovery ever had before. With his adjusted telescope, Galileo also documented various phases of Venus that resembled that of the moon, thus also providing evidence for the concept that the sun was the center of the universe. His discoveries made it very clear to the scientific community that the Aristotelian view of the universe could not work alongside such other phenomenon. The ideas of both Copernicus and Galileo helped revolutionize scientific belief in Europe, leading to the modern view of the universe that we still currently hold today.
Darwinism has had a major effect on how people view the creation accounts of Genesis, believing the creation tales to be completely erroneous and based on nothing but myth and myth alone. Darwinism has planted the seed of the idea that humans are merely a by-product of chance. They are accidental and contingent parts of creation -- not the lords of the universe as the Bible would lead us
Our modern world has also shown us that human actions have much more far-reaching and complex effects than have been previously thought. We have become so aware of these complexities, in fact, that in our most rational moments we human beings can admit that we do not know the full range of effects that our actions are having on the world. Because of this, leading the good life must also
Foremost, though, is the Nietzschian concept that freedom is never free -- there are costs; personal, societal, and spiritual. To continue that sense of freedom, one must be constantly vigilant and in danger of losing that freedom, for the moment the individual gasps a sigh of relief and feels "free" from contemplating freedom, tyranny will ensue. He believed that it was the internal cost that contained value. This, however,
Reality and Knowledge Epistemology (the study of knowledge) has occupied philosophers and laypeople alike for as long as human beings have had a conception of reality and knowledge. Many philosophers, beginning with Plato, have argued that reality and knowledge are essentially abstract concepts. Aristotle argued, in contrast that knowledge and reality must be based on the senses and inductive reasoning, while Hume argued that our understanding of reality and causation is
Rationalist Philosophers Descartes: Explain one of Descartes' arguments in Meditation VI for substance dualism. Critically discuss one possible objection to the argument. Descartes was not a nihilist or solipsist who truly doubted the existence of anything outside his own mind, and only used skepticism to arrive at clear and distinct ideas. He has already proved his own existence as a thinking being, and that God exists, along with his physical body and objects
Copernican revolution has a pivotal role in the establishment of the modern sciences. We are very much familiar with the fact that the human mind had always been fascinated greatly by the changes taking place around him almost constantly. Human observation and sense of argument and ability to be logical has made him the most intelligent and consequently most powerful species on the planet. It is very comfortable to believe that
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