Philosophy 2006 Lecture Notes - Great Machine
15 Apr 2012
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Unit iv lecture v march 13, 2012. 17th c. new approach to understanding natural objects and processes emerged. Nature was conceived as a great machine. This means that, when we give an explanation of something in nature, we would explain how it works the same way we would explain how a machine of our own making would work. Principles: aristotle many different kinds of principles (forms, qualities, souls, natures); many different kinds of motion (substantial change, quantitative, qualitative, etc. , mechanists only two things: matter & motion. Clock"s behaviour is regular, just like natural phenomena. In many cases, the mechanisms in a clock are hidden from plain view just as in nature, those mechanisms are hidden. Clocks and machines can appear to be alive and to act purposively, but we know that they are not we can explain all the movements of a machine just with reference to its parts.
