Lecture 2

LECTURE 2 - Nature's order as knowable..

Interaction between religion and science to explain rhythms in nature and man’s activities. Calendars. To describe movement of constellations to organize activities of planting and harvesting, seasons of storms and calm for travel in mountains, flood-lands, and rivers and oceans. To set the dates of religious festivals Christmas and Easter. Clocks to regulate daily activities (historical shift from the god(s) time to man’s time).

See Stuart McCready (ed.) 2001. The Discovery of Time. Sourcebooks, Inc. Naperville, IL.

Babylonian calendar -- had 12 29- or 30-day lunar months. Lunar months, each beginning on the evening when the crescent of the new moon was first visible. An extra month was added (intercalated) at irregular intervals to bring lunar calendar into line with the seasons. p 59. Similarity in Babylonian, Assyrian, and Jewish month names.

Babylonian star calendar pp. 64-73.

Islamic calendar – lunar. Each month starts when the first sliver of the crescent moon is sighted, about two days after the actual new moon. The months of calendar alternate 29 and 30 days, with 29 and ½ days taken as lunar month. No adjustment of calendar to bring into agreement with seasons.

Greek parapegma.star calendar.

Transition from star calendars to solar calendars. Greeks, then Roman Julian calendar. Finally Gregorian calendar recognized Leap Year mid 1570s. Gregorian calendar finally accepted in Asia in Japan 1873 Japan and China 1949.
Greeks. Reason and Causation.

Most cultures recognized that Nature was ordered. The Greeks distinguished between nature and culture. Under Greek rationalism, philosophers argued that Nature (the world) was ordered and followed logical principles (or laws). These principles were knowable through the application of reason. In addressing how things work most historians of ideas look at Aristotle's discussion of causality (as seen thru the language of the Scholastics). According to Aristotle there are 4 causes.
Material cause -- the material out of which things are made. Substance or substances of which natural objects are made.
Formal cause the thing's form, or essence, specified through the definition of the species of the thing to which it belongs. Form -- its essential characteristics.
Efficient cause or what brings it into being. efficio (LT means brings it about. Efficient cause is person. Person is agency of thing's existence. Efficient cause limited to man by Aristotle. Scholastics recognized non-human agents. Later efficient cause recognized as mechanical cause.
Final cause -- purpose for which something is made. End or purpose, beit human or divine. Often interpreted as telos.
Medieval causation.

Medieval Theories of Causation

Medieval scholars addressed the necessity of explanations couched in terms of final causes (Suarez)-scholastics; of explanation that emphasize formal causes - NeoPlatonists; some questioned whether the sense of any object (essence) was directly or indirectly revealed to the senses; some argued that forms exist as separate form one another. They are part of a world soul first as perfect essences in heavens, then as individual material objects, then an knowable forms (concepts) in our minds.
Modern causation

Material causation of Bacon. Observation and experimentation as basis for knowledge. Knowledge is law like or axioms. Reason allows us to derive laws/axioms. To deduce new experiences. Knowledge is nomothetic.

Bacon on causation.

Causal Processes

Probabilistic Causal Processes

Influence of environment on society

Ecological principles noted among Greeks and Romans see Hughes.