The Renaissance

 As the Islamic 'Houses of Learning' became less influential,

and the Muslim stronghold of Al-Andalus, in Spain, declined,
much of this knowledge was taken to Europe, where it formed
the basis of the first Renaissance.

 Here, during a time of great philosophical and theological

discovery, the collaboration of science and religion continued,
in an attempt to understand the nature of reality.

 Roger Grosseteste and Roger Bacon, in the 13th century,

further refined the scientific method, but the history and
philosophy of science began to take shape with the
meticulous and innovative work of Francis Bacon.
 In 1620, the great philosopher Francis Bacon (1561
- 1626) made great leaps in determining the course
of modern science by making a great leap in the
process of scientific reasoning and method.

 He believed that Aristotle's work, whilst broadly

true, needed to be adapted to fit the reality of
science, and he set out a new philosophy and
scientific method to address the issues.

 His main criticism of Aristotle was that deduction

from first principles was impossible in reality - the
Greeks had a belief in the perfection of the cosmos,
and so deduction could find answers to fit their view
of the universe.
 In the many centuries since, the view of the world
had changed, and Bacon believed that the universe
was much too complicated to explain by deduction
alone. He redesigned the scientific method to utilize
a largely induction based philosophy, where a series
of observations could be applied to the universe as
a whole.

 Bacon was the first philosopher to realize that pure

Aristotelian methods taught scientists nothing about
the universe, finding answers for observed
phenomena, but lacking the great leaps made by
Platonist thought.
 He realized that whilst deduction allowed the
application of a general rule to a particular and specific
circumstance, induction was needed to allow
observations of small or specific circumstances to a
larger population, or the wider universe.

 Cleverly, he also stated that induction did need to be

used with caution, and that to try to explain the universe
by inductive reasoning alone was inherently dangerous.

 Francis Bacon believed that pure empiricists gathered

important information, but had little idea how to use
their knowledge or advance science. There was no goal
or ultimate aim to the patient gathering of data.
 Rationalists, on the other hand, made great leaps
and generated ideas but, without careful
measurement, there was no method for determining
which were correct, or how accurate any theory
was. This process is still apparent in modern
science.

 Theoretical physicists like Einstein, Hawking and

Feynman generate beautiful mathematical formulas
and models to explain the unknown areas of
quantum physics and cosmology. However, they
understand that actual experimental and empirical
evidence always takes precedence, potentially
leading to the adjustment or abandonment of one of
these theories, if proved incorrect
 The other major addition to the scientific method
made by Bacon, possibly his biggest contribution to
the history and philosophy of science, was the idea
of experimental science, the basis of induction. He
believed research could be used to test the validity
of real world observations, with inductive
postulations made to generalize the findings to the
population as a whole.

 He also developed the practice that he called the

Instance of the Fingerpost,' where he proposed that
an experiment should be designed around two
discrete hypotheses; the researcher should aim to
find in favor of one and refute the other.
 Whilst there was no split between science and philosophy
during this Early Modern period, Bacon laid the foundation
stone for the divergence of the two disciplines. As a side
effect, his work also planted the seed of the first divisions
between science and theology, a shift in the focus of the
history and philosophy of science.

 Previously, science was very much seen as attempting to

explain the perfection of creation, with God as the initial first
principle, but science began to shift towards different
principles.

 Descartes (1596 - 1650) famously attempted to explain the

cosmos and epistemology by deduction from Aristotelian first
principles, based around the divine, but, at the end of his life,
even he realized that the cosmos was simply too complex to
be derived from first principles alone.
The Galilean Contribution to the
History and Philosophy of Science
 Galileo Galilei (1564 - 1642) who is usually referred to by
just his first name Galileo, was famous as a scientist. He
was also a highly respected philosopher. He took the
Baconian views of science to another level, further
emphasizing the need for both empiricism and rationalist
thinking.

 Whilst he was a great proponent of carefully designed

experiments, he believed that, in physics especially,
mathematics and geometry were essential to idealize
concepts. This was the first example of using modeling as a
foundation of the scientific method.
 Deduction, as shown by Bacon and later admitted
by Descartes, could not explain the complexities of
,
the universe, and so a simplified and idealized
model would give the scientist another tool of
discovery.

 Empiricists argued that his idealized concepts

could not be adapted to the real universe, but the
idea of mixing mathematical theory with empirical
'proof‘ was set.
 The Definition of Science
 The 18th century account of the history and
philosophy of science began to see the first
real development in a specific scientific
method that would distinguish it from non-
sciences.

 It is difficult, even now, to give a definition of

science, and it is perhaps more fruitful to
define what it is not, a process started by the
philosopher Christian Huygens (1629 - 1695).
 Christian Huygens argued that science and
mathematics were actually different fields,
and could not be treated the same way.

 The distinction he made between the two

was the idea of proof. He stated that
mathematics and geometry could prove
something beyond doubt, whereas science
can never prove something emphatically;
merely give a probability that a certain finding
is true.
 Huygens was the first proponent of the hypothetico-
deductive method where a scientist proposes a
hypothesis and then tries to deduce the probability
that it is correct, through observational and
empirical observation.

 This built upon the work of Bacon, but also

developed the idea that scientists could approach
the truth by constantly refining experiments and
increasing the probability of their hypothesis being
correct. This period saw the first divergence of the
history of the philosophy of science from
metaphysical philosophy.
 At this time, Newton also entered the fray,
initially possessing a divergent view from
Huygens, possibly because of his differing
viewpoint as a mathematician. He did not
advocate hypotheses, believing that any
research using a hypothesis could not be
scientific.

 Newton argued that any scientific

undertaking should begin with analysis,
where a scholar perform observations and
experiments and then make conclusions
depending upon his results.
 His viewpoint was christened synthesis,
where these inductive conclusions
should be applied to the universe as a
whole, to build up a model of the
universe.

 Newton was also an example of a

scientist/philosopher who believed that
the almighty was behind every process
in the universe, and that it was too
complex to be explained by physics
alone. He saw his works as uncovering
the laws of the universe behind creation.
 Huygens and Newton both agree that science
could not give definite answers, only a
probability that something was correct,
because humanity could not possibly
understand or comprehend the complexities
lying behind the universe.

 The other main contributor of this period, to

the history of the philosophy of science, was
David Hume (1711-1776), who first
highlighted the problem of induction, in that
any inductively derived 'proof' could be
undone by a single contrary observation.