In fact it is necessary to distinguish three things. One hand, there was a mechanism, which in General is quite a brief period (only the second half of the XVII century) proposed a theoretical model of some areas of knowledge, such as medicine or physiology. On the other hand, there were also quite diverse in its forms, the desire to the mathematization of the empirical. Permanent and continuous in astronomy and partly in physics, this ambition was sporadic in other fields-sometimes it was carried out in fact (as with Condorcet), sometimes suggested as a universal ideal and a horizon research (as with Condillac or Desto), sometimes simply rejected in its very opportunities (as, for example, Buffon). Ho nor a desire, nor the attempts of mechanism should not be confused with attitude, which all classical knowledge in its most General form supports with the mathesis, understood as a universal science measure and order. Using meaningless words "Cartesian effect" or "Newtonian model", attractive because of their ambiguity, historians of ideas used to confuse these three things and define classical rationalism as the temptation to make nature mechanical and calculable. Other -- less skilled -- and eager to discover beneath this rationalism the game "opposite forces": forces of nature and life that are not reducible neither algebra nor the physics of motion and preserving such by the way, in the depths of classicism source
In fact it is necessary to distinguish three things. One
ReplyDeletehand, there was a mechanism, which in General is quite
a brief period (only the second half of the XVII century) proposed
a theoretical model of some areas of knowledge, such as
medicine or physiology. On the other hand, there were also
quite diverse in its forms, the desire to
the mathematization of the empirical. Permanent and continuous in
astronomy and partly in physics, this ambition was
sporadic in other fields-sometimes it was carried out
in fact (as with Condorcet), sometimes suggested as a
universal ideal and a horizon research (as with Condillac
or Desto), sometimes simply rejected in its very
opportunities (as, for example, Buffon). Ho nor a desire,
nor the attempts of mechanism should not be confused with attitude, which
all classical knowledge in its most General form
supports with the mathesis, understood as a universal science
measure and order. Using meaningless words
"Cartesian effect" or "Newtonian model",
attractive because of their ambiguity, historians of ideas used
to confuse these three things and define classical rationalism as
the temptation to make nature mechanical and calculable. Other
-- less skilled -- and eager to discover beneath this rationalism
the game "opposite forces": forces of nature and life that are not reducible
neither algebra nor the physics of motion and preserving such
by the way, in the depths of classicism source