Scientist and their affections in the Baroque time

We know the Baroque time is also the time for the birth of modern science. Scientist like Galileo, Descartes, Locke … contributed astounding researching for human kind. Beside their contribution in the science, Lawrence in his book Culture and Values A Survey of the Humanities, these scientist like Descartes, Hobbes “instead of accepting official church teachings, tried to examine the problem of human existence by their own intellectual approaches” (407). They are not only impressive scientist but also magnificent humanist.

First, we talk about Galileo and his contribution. Unlike Copernicus, killed by the Catholic church, Galileo could get away with his “crime”. At that time, people began to have knowledge and the concept of humanity, they had “trust in science ad in the power of human reason, belief in a natural order, and an overriding faith in the theory of progress that the world was better than it had ever been and was bound to get better still” (413).

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English: René Descartes, the French philosopher, ...

Statue of René Descartes with his famous statemen...

People believe more in the science which mean less in the church and their doctrines. The church could not do something like “ground of heresy” anymore. Due to the Galileo case, we know that the power of the church is no more. The Bible is no more the only text book for everything for we have known about the departure of many kind or art and thinking from the teaching of the church and the bile: humanism, mannerism and science which should be taken away separately from what it described in the bible. It was the time the church failed to control the most impressive thing: the power of knowledge. Galileo “se forth a new way of approaching scientific problems. Instead of trying to understand the final cause of or cosmic purpose of natural events and phenomena, he tried to explain their character and the manner in which they came about” (401). Galileo with his style of researching the science, with his own fighting toward the church was the proof of the evolution of human’s concept of intellectual thinking.

“Cogito, ergo sum”(“think, therefore I am”)” (402) was the famous phrase of Descartes. We often say that “we think” but unfortunately we don’t think at all but follow the trend. His way of studying science also showed us the concept of the real humanist. We talk about skepticism, the ability to doubt, is what show us that we are the true human like Descartes: “the very act of doubting proved that he was a thinking being” (402). He want to make a fresh start by denying all of the definition he knew before. Then he began to doubt and thus thought about the problem and found the answer. This was of working was an impressive way to prove that we are the true human being for the ability of thinking at our own concept. If we don’t think nor doubt, we are not human beings.

“Galileo and Descartes represent the major trends in the seventeenth-century thought” (403). It is true. The trend of thinking they created was the most solid proof of the definition of man. Divert from the old teaching, try to examine everything by intellectual factors, doubt everything so that we can think … show us that we are human and a thinker.

Work citedCulture and Values A Survey of the Humanitieswww.thomson.com/learningwww.art.wasworth.com/cunninghamm06

Portrait of Galileo Galilei by Justus Sustermans p...

English: Galileo facing the Roman Inquisition, pai...

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