ENG 531 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Empirical Research, Age Of Enlightenment
21 Sep 2016
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Mental faculty that allows us to transform data into ideas. Allows us to organize, evaluate, and compare these ideas. Universal faculty; mostly for adult, educated, european men, most fit to use reason according to enlightenment writers. Preventing use of reason were ideas and social structures formed in the past such as: customs and traditions, prejudice, superstition. Reason is the process that allows one to arrive at truth. The enlightenment was not necessarily atheistic, but certainly secular. Popular form of religion among enlightenment thinkers was called deism. Deism: belief in a creator, but a rejection of established church dogmas: god as engineer, mechanic, clockmaker, opposed to priest craft ; superstition, manipulation, ritual. Empirical method: scientific method based on true induction; gathering large quantities of data through observation, drawing conclusions only from visual evidence. Received scientific knowledge from the past referred to as idols = object of worship (uncritical reverence: associated with tradition, credulity, negligence.
