New time: the philosophy of experience and reason

The characterization of the philosophy of modern times can be summarized as follows. This era of the development of human thought justified the scientific revolution and prepared the Enlightenment. Quite often in the specialized literature there is an assertion that it was during this period that methods of scientific cognition were developed, namely empiricism, which proclaimed the priority of experience based on feelings, and rationalism, which upheld the idea of the mind as the bearer of truth. However, both of them considered mathematics and its methods ideal for any science. Features of the philosophy of modern times in this regard can be considered using the example of Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes.

Opponents

The English philosopher believed that the human mind is so "littered" with a kind of "idols" that prevent it from perceiving real things, which has brought to the absolute the experience and the direct study of nature. Only this, according to Bacon, can lead to independence and independence of the researcher, as well as to new discoveries. Therefore, experiment-based induction is the only way to the truth. After all, the latter, from the point of view of the thinker, is the daughter of not authorities, but of an era. Bacon was one of the famous theoreticians, from whom the New Age began. The philosophy of his contemporary Descartes was based on other principles. He was a supporter of deduction and reason as a criterion of truth. He agreed that everything should be doubted, but he believed that thinking is the only way to distinguish error from truth. We need only adhere to a clear and definite logical order and move from simple things to more complex ones. But, in addition to these thinkers, this era is interesting by several more names.

New time: the philosophy of John Locke

This thinker proposed a compromise between the theories of Descartes and Bacon. He agreed with the latter that the source of ideas can only be experience. But by this term he understood not only external sensations, but also internal reflections. That is, thinking, too. Since man himself is a kind of "clean sheet", on which experience draws certain images, these images, or qualities, can also be sources of knowledge. But you can only talk about the most essential ideas. More complex concepts, such as "God" or "good" are a combination of simple ones. In addition, as the thinker believed, we are so arranged that some of the qualities that we perceive are objective and correspond to reality, while others reflect the specifics of the action of things on the senses and can deceive us.

New time: the philosophy of David Hume

Another feature of the described time is the emergence of agnosticism and skepticism. Both these trends are associated with David Hume, who preferred to proceed not out of high truths, but out of common sense. "What's the use of talking about Being," he thought, "it's better to think about something practical." Therefore, mathematics is the most reliable knowledge, it can be proved logically. In this idea, as if all the New time was concentrated. Hume's philosophy leads him to the conclusion that all the rest of knowledge, even coming from experience, is only our assumptions, and it can have an exceptionally probabilistic character. All sciences proceed from the premise that any action has a cause, but it is far from always possible to understand it. We can not know for sure whether our knowledge of the universe and its order is true. But some ideas are very useful, because they can be applied in practice.