SOCI1503 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Ancient Philosophy, Natural Philosophy, Experimental Psychology
Document Summary
Thus, aristotle studied planetary motion and poetry with the same methods, and plato mixed geometrical proofs with his demonstration on the state of intrinsic knowledge. By the end of the 17th century, a new scientific paradigm was emerging, particularly with the work of isaac newton in physics. Newton, by revolutionizing what was then called natural philosophy, changed the basic framework by which individuals understood what was scientific. While newton was merely the archetype of an accelerating trend, his work highlights an important distinction. For newton, mathematical truth was objective and absolute: it flowed from a reality independent of the observer and it worked by its own rules. In the realm of other disciplines, this created a pressure to express ideas in the form of mathematical relationships, or laws. Such laws became the model that other disciplines would emulate. In the late 19th century, scholars increasingly tried to apply mathematical laws to explain human behavior.
