A History Of Knowledge

Transcription

1 A History Of Knowledge What The Victorian Age Knew Chapter 22: Piero Scaruffi (2004) Edited and revised by Chris Hastings (2013)

2 Wilhelm Dilthey (1900) Founder of Hermeneutics Human knowledge can only be understood when the knower's life (lived in a historically-conditioned culture) is taken into consideration Understanding a text implies understanding the relationship of expression to what is expressed, a holistic process that involves the spirit of the age (the overall historical context) All cultural products are analogous to written texts 2

3 Wilhelm Dilthey (1900) The human sciences differ from the natural sciences (objective study of nature) because they depend on the human experience The human sciences introduce three categories: Value, purpose, and meaning 3

4 David Hilbert (1900) Entscheidungsproblem: Does a general algorithmic procedure for resolving all mathematical problems exist? 4

5 Edmund Husserl (1901) The essence of something is not its physical constituents or physical laws, but the way we experience it Phenomenology is the science of phenomena Science caused a crisis by denying humans the truth of the reality that they experience (by proving that phenomenon and being are not identical) Advocates a return to the primary experience of the world Phenomena and being are one and the same 5

6 Edmund Husserl (1901) Consciousness is intentional (as in refers to ): Consciousness is consciousness of The intentionality of consciousness correlates the act of knowing (noesis) by the subject with the object that is known (noema) The phenomenon is intuitively known to the subject The essence (eidos) of the phenomenon is the sum of all possible intuitive ways of knowing the phenomenon This has to be achieved after bracketing out ( einklammerung ) the physical description of the phenomenon (the description given by the natural sciences) What is left is a purely transcendental knowledge of the phenomenon Subject and object are not separated 6

7 Alexius Meinong (1902) Some objects do not exist but have subsistence It is true both that the round square is round and also that it is square 7

8 George Moore (1903) Naturalistic fallacy: Trying to define a moral concept on the basis of non-moral concepts (happiness, pleasure, utility) Good is a primitive concept The concept of good is learned by intuition Good is not an experimental quantity Good is not a noun, but a predicate used in ethical judgements Rehabilitation of common sense Sense-data: What we perceive of an object (e.g., the surface/texture of a table) How do we derive knowledge of an object from our sensedata? 8

9 Albert Einstein (1903) The photoelectric phenomenon is due to the fact that light is a stream of finite photons (energy quanta). Photons appear when electrons emit light. Photons disappear when electrons absorb light. The energy of the photon is a multiple of Planck s constant: The quantum is universal 9

10 Albert Einstein (1905) Axioms: The laws of nature must be the same (invariant) in all frames of reference that are inertial (Galileo s old principle of relativity) The speed of light is the same in all directions Then space and time cannot be absolute 10

11 Albert Einstein (1905) Consequences: The combined equations of Newton and Maxwell do not satisfy Galilean relativity but another kind of relativity Lorentz transformations to preserve relativity (invariance) The length of an object and the duration of an event are relative to the observer All quantities must have four dimensions, a time component and a space component (e.g., energymomentum) Equivalence of mass and energy (E=mc2) 11

12 Albert Einstein (1905) Space and time are not absolute "Now" is a meaningless concept The past determines the future Nothing can travel faster than light Time does not flow (no more than space does), it is just a dimension 12

13 Max Weber (1905) Rationalization, bureaucratization, and alienation associated with capitalism Capitalism originates from religious ideals (Calvinism) The state claims a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence Stahlhartes Gehaüse ( Iron Cage ): Increasing rationalization of human life, which traps individuals in over-bureaucratized social order 13

14 Max Weber (1905) Science can improve the material conditions of the individual but not provide meaning Science/technology demystifies life and makes it less exciting to live 14

15 George Santayana (1906) Human beings are physical systems that can be explained by the laws of Physics Minds are caused by bodies (mind is an emergent property of matter) Minds cannot influence bodies 15

16 Pierre Duhem (1906) No scientific statement can be refuted, as one can always tweak the scientific theory that the statement belongs to so that the statement becomes true The certainty that a proposition is true decreases with any increase of its precision 16

17 Hermann Minkowski (1908) Space and time are different dimensions of the same space-time continuum Each observer has a different perspective on the events in the space-time continuum (e.g., length or duration) Past and future are segments of space-time continuum Each observer s history is constrained by a cone of light within the space-time continuum Each observer s history is a world line, the spatiotemporal path on which the observer is actually traveling through space-time Proper time is the space-time distance between two points on a world line (the time experienced by the observer as she travels along her world line) 17

18 Margaret Murray (1908) Performs autopsy on an Egyptian mummy at the Manchester Chemical Theater 18

19 This is a chapter in Piero Scaruffi s A History Of Knowledge: