How Scientific Experimentation is Superior to Rationality...

Now that we have looked at the differences between the experimental type of thinking and the other types we have discussed, we can see that it is superior to any of the others. Experimental thinking does, to be sure, emphasize systematization and classification, but as means, not as ends in themselves. And, along with rationalism, it emphasizes general principles and laws, but again, not as ends in themselves, but as convenient guides for making our inferences. Neither observation nor infere...

 The Scientific Method is a Process for Knowing that is Su...

Since mere observation cannot provide the solution to a problem, no matter how accurately it is conducted the necessary next step is inference the process which leads from the present to the future, from the known to the unknown. Every inference is a sort of adventure. Another difference between the scientific method and ordinary common sense is that the former controls the adventure more carefully, and thus reduces the danger involved. The more rigorous the method the less the danger. Safegu...

 Locke Rejected Innate Ideas as a Defense of Arbitrary Aut...

The first target against which he directed his criticism was the doctrine of innate ideas. Since Locke s position was that all knowledge is derived ultimately from experience, it was altogether natural that he should repudiate this Platonic doctrine; but there was another reason for his determination to discredit it. The doctrine of innate ideas had become a weapon for the defense of arbitrary authority, of superstition, and of ridiculous theories. Men in authority argued that their actions w...

 Locke Divided Experience into Sensation and Reflection

In his exploration into the nature of belief, seen from the psychological point of view Locke divided experience into two categories—first, sensation, or perception of external objects, and second, reflection, the activity in which the self observes its own state of mind, its own feelings and thoughts. According to Locke all human experience is embraced in these two categories; but the second, reflection, is based in and arises from the first, sensation. Sense impression of the external wor...

 Cartesian Methodology Applied to Personal Intellectual Gr...

...Cartesian methodology calls for intellectual individualism; it emphasizes reason as the common possession of all men. The reason that people disagree is that their reason has been perverted by the wrong kind of education, or poisoned by superstition, or vitiated by preoccupation. Descartes held that all men had equal and natural ability to make sound judgments, and to distinguish the true from the false, until and unless these abilities were crippled or stunted by improper education or by ...

 How Descartes Broke With Classical Thinking

Classical thinking had assigned different natures to different things—minerals had one nature, stars another, plants another. But Descartes discarded these distinctions and looked upon all things as being equal in nature. The mystical distinction among the natures of things thus disappeared. For example, respiration in the human body and the circulation of blood were no longer inexplicable, or virtually magic phenomena; both could now be treated in terms of extension and motion. The circula...

 Aristotle Considered Experiential Knowledge of Lower Value

Aristotle gave the name experience to change which is irregular, and differentiated this from scientific knowledge, or rational knowledge. The only changes that could come within the scope of science were those which moved in the direction of, and which were governed by, final cause——the chick and the oak, again. Typical of the things which Aristotle regarded as certain, and therefore admissible to the realm of science, were the stars of the heavens which could be counted and which moved ...

 How to Not Fear Death

Some old people are oppressed by the fear of death. In the young there there is a justification for this feeling. Young men who have reason to fear that they will be killed in battle may justifiably feel bitter in the thought that they have been cheated of the best things that life has to offer. But in an old man who has known human joys and sorrows, and has achieved whatever work it was in him to do, the fear of death is somewhat abject and ignoble. The best way to overcome it—so at least ...

 Intelligence in Oral and Print Societies

In a purely oral culture, intelligence is often associated with aphoristic ingenuity, that is, the power to invent compact sayings of wide applicability. The wise Solomon, we are told in First Kings, knew three thousand proverbs. In a print culture, people with such a talent are thought to be quaint at best, more likely pompous bores. In a purely oral culture, a high value is always placed on the power to memorize, for where there are no written words, ,the human mind must function as a mobil...

 The Magus by Eliphas Levi

They are without fears and without desires, dominated by no falsehood, sharing no error, loving without illusion, suffering without impatience, reposing in the quietude of eternal thought... a Magus cannot be ignorant, for magic implies superiority, mastership, majority, and majority signifies emancipation by knowledge. The Magus welcomes pleasure, accepts wealth, deserves honour, but is never the slave of one of them; he knows how to be poor, to abstain, and to suffer; he endures oblivion wi...