Lecture 1.1 The Ancients and the Moderns
What is Science?
science as an extreme of knowledge: privileged knowledge
but does not have to be true: much science will be
found false
presently known truths are less interesting than
discoveries
Subject Matter: difficult to determine
mathematics a science?
natural sciences, social
sciences, literary criticism
Method: empirical method as hallmark of modern science
refinements in techniques of observation:
assays, peer review, controlled
environments, reproducability
but axiomatic-deductive sciences – mathematics
questions of human values – in the social sciences,
and in natural sciences
Intellectual Structure
relation between theory and observation
relation between theory and theory
statements of science are consistent
many ancient strictures can be taken for granted
philosophical questions,
ontological claims less interesting
On Ancient Medicine
Institutional Structure
scientists; labs, grants, journals, prizes
Lindberg ch. 1 Science and its Origins
Modern and Ancient
modern-develops techniques to avoid error in
observation, seeing right
relation between prediction and theory and observation
answered to an empirical epistemology
intensely social - labs with numerous assistants
multiple author papers, confirming experience
knowledge is a public entity
intense competition for fame - social currency
Cartesian doubt
methods to make the invisible visible
infiniteness of knowledge
ancient-develops techniques of intellectual
organisation
so the concern
with subject-matter
essentially
individual ,cf. NE X
relation of
the individual mind with universal necessity, theology
elevation of
cause and deduction, principles
inferring the
invisible from the visible through the power of reason
finiteness of
knowledge