A History of Western Philosophy Book 2

Series Overview

A history of Western philosophy is a progressive story of the best answers to the most interesting and important questions we have asked in our attempts to understand the world and our experience in it from the beginning of our time on Earth. Examples of such questions are:

• What can we know, and how can we come to know it?
• What is the fundamental nature of our world and ourselves?
• How can we best live and organise our individual and collective lives most satisfyingly and happily?

From early childhood to very old age we all ask philosophical questions because we feel the need to understand our human situation and condition.

This history is divided into 11 major Parts presented in 7 separate Books, covering the main developments in science and philosophy over the past 2,500 years. During this time, some radically different schools of thought have emerged, all integrally related to the history of the times, societies and cultures from which they arose.

Book 2: The Beginnings of Modern Philosophy: the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

Nicolaus Copernicus’s discovery that the Earth was not the centre of the universe but a relatively small star orbiting the sun undermined the authority of the established Church and paved the way for the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century. The seventeenth century has been called “The Age of Reason”, its philosophy being dominated by “rationalism”, the belief that all knowledge comes from deductive reasoning and not from sense experience. In contrast, the eighteenth century was called “The Age of Enlightenment” in which empiricism - reliance on observation and experimental verification - held sway.