Natural Philosophy

Natural philosophy or philosophy of nature, known in Latin under the term philosophia naturalis , is an expression which applies to the objective study of the Nature and of the physical universe which reigned before the development of the modern Science (Galileo). It was traditionally allied with the natural Théologie.

It formerly indicated the whole of sciences astronomical, physical, chemical and biological.

Origins of the expression

Etymology

The Natural word drift of the Latin , which has the same direction.

The word Physique has like etymology the Greek word phusikê , which also means Nature.

At the 12th century, when the word appeared in old French, the Physique had a double direction: medicine, and science of nature (ex: an English doctor is a physician ).

Starting from the end of the 15th century, the physical word indicated science of the natural causes . The pulpits of natural philosophy established in old the University S created at the 13th century, included/understood the whole of sciences of nature, according to a university corpus which rested on the philosophy of Aristote.

17th century: Transformation of direction

The word Physique took its modern direction, which is more restricted than the original direction, as from the 17th century (Galileo, Descartes), and especially of the traditional physics which was born with Newton. The physical word is employed in its current direction since 1690 (the Petit Robert).

Forms of science developed historically starting from philosophy, or of what one regarded as natural philosophy in their historical context. In the old universities, are nowadays occupied mainly by professors of physics. The concepts that we have science and scientists date only from the 19th century. Before this time, the word " science" simply knowledge meant (science and knowledge have the same etymology) and the " label" of scientist did not exist.

What marked a turning in mentalities, it was the famous lawsuit of Galileo (1633), and the philosophical reaction of Descartes. This one wrote, in its not less famous Discourse on Method (1637), that the man was “to go as Master and owner of nature”. According to Jean Bastaire, it would be the origin of the man demiurge and the ecological Crise total which we live.

With the turning of and, one started to consider that the scientific treaty of Isaac Newton (1687) formed the mathematical principles of natural philosophy. However, Newton was not a philosopher, but " seulement" a scientist. The revolution which the awakening constituted that the Ground turned around the Sun (Héliocentrisme), involved changes of mentalities: it was realized that it was possible to explain this phenomenon by equations exprimables in mathematical language, thanks to theories of differential and integral calculus (see Révolution copernician for the chronology).

Natural philosophy was the term of which the use preceded our current term by science in the sense that, before the replacement of natural the philosophy term by that of science, the science term was employed exclusively (and comparatively seldom) like a synonym of knowledge or study, and when the topic of this knowledge or study was the work of nature, then natural the philosophy term was used.

Modern science ( scientia in Latin which means " connaissance") could acquire the statute of natural philosophy when pure the Déduction, allied to the methods inductive S of acquisition of the Connaissance, managed to establish truths on the Phénomène S Naturel S, without the support of the Révélation (cf Descartes Principles of philosophy). Let us recall that in general Logique, which rests on the philosophical bases of Aristote), the induction is one of the three types of Inférence, with the Déduction and the Abduction. The experimental method, empirical by nature, is based mainly on induction.

Since the 19th century

The term was ressuscity in the context of the controversy on creation and the evolution by those which were anxious of what science does not accept the supernatural explanations.

Outstanding figures

Parménide

The question of Nature is put by the presocratic philosophers under the angle of the question of the of being. Parménide (fine of the 6th century, medium of) is the outstanding figure of this approach. He wrote a treaty on the Nature ( Of nature ), which is practically the only one that we preserved. The assertion celebrates of Parménide, posing a paralyzing truth for the spirit: “the being is, the non-being is not” poses Nature like ontologiquement intangible and eternal. Indeed: the non-being which cannot, by definition, to be , how the to be could come from what is not? A more expressive reformulation can be: how can there be something starting from nothing?. This ontological assertion, resting on a fundamental logical truth, raises nevertheless the difficulty of the apprehension of the Nature which we have by the experiment: this one is indeed controlled by the change, the birth and death, and thus by the passage of a to be with the non-being .

Héraclite

The thought of Héraclite is the extreme opposite of the eleatism of Parménide. For this last, the unit to be it makes impossible the deduction of becoming and the multiplicity; for Héraclite, on the contrary, the being is eternally in becoming. Héraclite denies the being parménidien thus. The things do not have consistency, and all is driven unceasingly: null thing does not remain what it is, and any master key in its opposite.

“With those which go down in the same rivers always occur of others and other water. ” (Fragment 12, Arius Didyme in Eusèbe, evangelic Preparation, XV, 20,2)

All becomes all, all is all. What saw dies, which died becomes alive: the current of the generation and dead never stops. What is visible becomes invisible, which is invisible becomes visible; the day and the night are only one and even thing; there is no difference between what is useful and what is harmful; the top does not differ from bottom, the beginning does not differ from the end:

Plato

Plato devotes his dialog the Sophist to refute the thesis of Parménide, and to show the coexistence of the to be and the non-being by introducing the concepts of movement , of rest , other , even :

“The FOREIGNER -: It thus follows necessarily that the non-being is in the movement and all the kinds; because, in all, nature to be it, while returning each one other that the being, makes a non-being of them, so that to this point of view we can say with accuracy which they all are of the not-beings and, on the other hand, because they take part to be it, that they are and have to be it. ”

A difficulty nevertheless remains for a Platonicienne approach of Nature: it is basically about a philosophy of the Idées, which poses the problem of the knowledge of the Nature in therme of knowledge of the Idea of Nature. There thus where Parménide operates an ontological of Nature but inadequate reductionnism to the comprehension of diversity and change observable, Plato forces to us to see beyond what offer to us our feel, and thus detaches us from the Nature apprehended in the materiality.

Aristote

The conciliation of these two approaches (positioning in the world sensitive and the consideration of the change inherent in Nature) is operated by Aristote in the '' Physique ''. This work presented by Heidegger as “the basic book of Western philosophy”, initiates indeed the approach Métaphysique Nature. Indeed the knowledge of Nature for Aristote consists in not knowing the elements (like Parménide or the physicists: water, ground, fire and air) but first principles: the Main causes. In that it is indeed a metaphysics because the method consists from what is first for us , the given sensitive one and totalities who are offered to us, to décourvrir what is first by nature , it is a question of exceeding the knowledge of nature such as it is given to us while trying to determine its bases.

Nature is a mode to be

Aristote devotes Chapter 2 and 3 of Book I to the criticism of the Philosophers of the school of Élée, Éléates, among which is Parménide. Chapter 2 thus starts “to examine whether being is to it one and motionless, it is not to examine nature”. It continues with the problematization of the concepts of to be and a : each one being able to include/understand various ways. Made direct criticism with Parménide intervenes in Chapter 3. Aristote reproaches Parménide for designing the being only like one totality, neglecting that the being can custom say itself what composes this totality. One sees here stinging the problem of the report/ratio of the components of this totality. Nature is left as of now apprehending like mode to be, like a particular type to be.

Nature a finality

Nature for Aristote is form more than Matière .

Aristote

This large philosopher of the Greek traditional time wrote many treaties on nature, which preserve a certain interest. The tradition of the knowledge which rested on Aristote and the Philosophie first (or Métaphysique) was very décriée by Descartes and the Positiviste S, which reproached mainly the Scolastique not for not having taken enough account of the observations Astronomique S on the movement of planets (see Galileo). Nevertheless, the philosophy of Aristote (and not its treaties of metaphysics where the ground is in the center of the universe) include/understand certainly many interesting concepts today: for example, it does not limit the Logique to pure Déduction, but includes other forms like the induction.

Albert Large the (between 1193 and 1206 - 1280)

This naturalist and zoologist of the Bas the Middle Ages introduced Greek philosophy into the Western universities at the 13th century. Civilization arabo-Moslem woman brought much also at that time on what is in connection with the natural science: botany, pharmacy…

Peak of Mirandole

Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)

This philosopher (not to be confused with Roger Bacon) is at the origin of proposals for an approach much more curious and practical of the study of the Nature. The traditional and general design of the Logique has like principal base the Organum of Aristote, and the new stress laid on the induction and the Recherche has like reference the treaty Novum Organum of Francis Bacon.

Francis Bacon made career in Droit and Politique, and contributed to many fields of the To know: Science, Philosophy, History and Literature. He was opposed to the Scolastique at one time when this one was declining. He is regarded as the father of the Empirisme and the Experimental method modern. He writes in the Novum Organum that the Connaissance comes us in the form of objects from the Nature, but that we impose our clean Interprétation S on these objects. According to Bacon, our scientific theories are built according to the way in which we see the objects; the human being is thus skewed in its declaration of Hypothèse S.

Robert Boyle (1626 - 1691)

He wrote what is regarded as a work headlight on the distinction between Nature and Métaphysique called has Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion off Natural . This book, written in 1686, marked the starting point of the transformation of natural philosophy into science. It represented a radical démarquage compared to the Scolastique of her time, declining at the time of Galileo. Whereas characteristics of natural philosophy retained some of the interests of the elite attached to its prerogatives, Boyle considered that it was bearable to regard natural philosophy as Empirique, insofar as the former attempts to describe nature were not founded. An important characteristic which distinguishes science and natural philosophy is the fact that the natural philosophers of this time did not feel not obliged to compare their ideas with the practice. On the contrary, they observed the phenomena and deduced some from the " conclusions; philosophiques".

John Locke (1632 - 1704)

This philosopher Empiriste English is the founder of the political Philosophie. Its name however finds its place in philosophy of nature, insofar as it based the political Philosophie on the natural law (treated law off natural ).

Samuel von Pufendorf (1626 - 1691)

The ideas of this philosopher of the natural Right are at the origin of the constitution of the United States of America.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 - 1778)

This in love with nature ( daydreams of a solitary walker ) did not formulate a philosophy of nature according to rigorous concepts, nevertheless its influence on the natural Right (the social contract) had a considerable influence at the time of the Lumières, in France and Europe, but also in the United States.

Rene Dubos (1901-1982)

This Agronomist, Biologist, and ecologist French emigrant with the the United States, took part in the preliminary works of the first Sommet of the Earth in Stockholm in 1972. It is in the beginning expression “to think it total, to act local”, which is one of the bases of philosophy as regards Sustainable development.

Hans Jonas

This German philosopher, still little known in France, defined a philosophy concerning the impact of the technique on the company ( the Principle responsibility , 1979), and on the risks related to the human activity. He is at the origin of the Precaution principle. The impact of its philosophy is considerable on the questions of Sustainable development, particularly in Germany, where its book is the book of philosophy more read.

Daniel Quinn

See too

Éco-philosopher and American writer, inspired by the movements claiming L green Anarchisme and pose some fundamental questions on the animal nature of the man and the ambiguous designs of Nature and Culture. Its works are fictions proposing a second reading of the modern Ethnologie inspired by work of Claude Levi-Strauss and a corrected version of the demographic arguments of Thomas Malthus. Often interpreted like an essay writer of the Anarchist-primitivism, he opposes farmers and gatherers - hunters without their giving reason for as much.

Dominique Borough

This French philosopher took part in the development of the Charte of the environment (March 2005). This charter was wanted by the president of the Republic, Jacques Chirac.

Return of the philosophy of nature

theories of the evolution

In the context of the controversy on the various forms of evolution, the philosophy of nature was ressuscitée (or, according to some, adapted) by holding of the creationnism, particularly the science of creation and the intelligent design, which criticize modern science because it rejects the supernatural explanations.

Today, the Catholic church regards the evolution as a serious assumption, while stressing that there exists several Théories of the evolution.

sustainable development

Another factor which plays in favor of a return to the philosophy of the nature, is the stake of the Sustainable development for the present generations and future, which seeks to reconcile the aspects Environnementaux (ecological S), with the constraints Sociale S and economic S (three pillars). The philosophers lean more and more on these questions: impact of the human activity on nature and the man, precaution principle (Hans Jonas), principle of “thinking total, acting local” (Rene Dubos), aspects Institutional S, and impacts in constitutional Law (Dominique Borough).

Fundamental questions in philosophy of nature

Today, the fundamental questions are obviously related to the rarefaction of the Natural resources, with the Climate change, the loss of Biodiversité: these stakes are developed in a series of articles: Sustainable development, Responsibility sociétale for the companies…

It appears that the purely Cartesian method, which consists in dividing into detailed elements, removes the overall vision necessary. It is not that the man should not be “a Master and owner of nature”, but rather than the report/ratio of the man to the world cannot be any more that of the man of the 17th century, whereas the planet was populated of 600 million inhabitants only. It is not sure that the method Cartésienne rests on bases Métaphysique S and ethical S enough solid to treat the complexity of the problems of the alive one.

The questions of philosophy of nature can be approached thanks to new concepts, whose principal ones are as follows:

The principal basic concepts used in philosophy of nature are the space, the Temps, the Réalité…

See too

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