When the Scientific Revolution first emerged in the mid 1500’s, it marked a historical change in the way people would perceive the universe and how it worked for the next 200 years. Starting with Copernicus and ending with Newton, a new type of evolution was occurring: the evolution of thought and knowledge. The major thinkers involved in the revolution also included Galileo, Bacon and Descartes. For the purpose of this essay, I will be discussing the similarities and differences in thought between Bacon and Descartes, and while some dimensions of their work bear resemblance, the contradictions between the two are strikingly distinct.
Although these great thinkers had completely different thought processes, they also had two things in which …show more content…
Bacon believed that it was only through observation, experience and experimentation that knowledge can be derived from laying the foundation for empiricism . Where as Descartes seemed to rely more on logical reasoning and rationality to systematically doubt knowledge and understanding, emphasizing Cartesian rationalism . Empiricists believe that innate knowledge does not exist, rather, knowledge is gained through human senses and reasoning. This challenges Cartesian rationalism because Descartes strongly believed that all knowledge was innate and through the right reasoning, we come to an understanding of the knowledge that was already in our minds . Descartes uses the existence God and perfection to support the idea that all knowledge is innate . He argues that the human mind, as imperfect as it is, can easily create imperfect things, where as an imperfect mind is incapable of inventing a perfect being or object . With this in mind, Descartes renders God as a perfect being and therefore cannot be a delusion that the mind has created concluding that the perfections he has in himself is because of God’s perfection . He then demonstrates that to assure the existence of God, all an individual needs to do is to take a look at shapes, as God’s existence is implied into the idea of perfection as the idea that a triangle’s angles must add up to 180 degrees is implied into the geometrical set up of the shape . Through Descartes existence of God rationale, readers can undoubtedly see that his approach of understanding things can only be achieved through reasoning and cannot exclusively rely on ones senses which contrasts Bacon’s belief that it is only through observation and experimentation that knowledge can truly be understood and
Although these great thinkers had completely different thought processes, they also had two things in which …show more content…
Bacon believed that it was only through observation, experience and experimentation that knowledge can be derived from laying the foundation for empiricism . Where as Descartes seemed to rely more on logical reasoning and rationality to systematically doubt knowledge and understanding, emphasizing Cartesian rationalism . Empiricists believe that innate knowledge does not exist, rather, knowledge is gained through human senses and reasoning. This challenges Cartesian rationalism because Descartes strongly believed that all knowledge was innate and through the right reasoning, we come to an understanding of the knowledge that was already in our minds . Descartes uses the existence God and perfection to support the idea that all knowledge is innate . He argues that the human mind, as imperfect as it is, can easily create imperfect things, where as an imperfect mind is incapable of inventing a perfect being or object . With this in mind, Descartes renders God as a perfect being and therefore cannot be a delusion that the mind has created concluding that the perfections he has in himself is because of God’s perfection . He then demonstrates that to assure the existence of God, all an individual needs to do is to take a look at shapes, as God’s existence is implied into the idea of perfection as the idea that a triangle’s angles must add up to 180 degrees is implied into the geometrical set up of the shape . Through Descartes existence of God rationale, readers can undoubtedly see that his approach of understanding things can only be achieved through reasoning and cannot exclusively rely on ones senses which contrasts Bacon’s belief that it is only through observation and experimentation that knowledge can truly be understood and