Warring Cosmologies and The Emergence of Eurocentric Science

Abstract

In the previous chapter I said a lot about the arguments Aristotle made about two issues: first, the construction of new knowledge through reason and second, the nature of reality and the role of our senses in understanding that nature. Aristotle and his followers accepted that there was an external objective world that was separate from our consciousness, that we could perceive reality but not create it and for each of us that perception was unique. They accepted that axioms used in deductive reasoning were self-evident fundamental principles that did not need proof and that knowledge came from experience-based reasoning, which for all living things was unique to humans. Consistent with most Greek philosophers, Aristotle believed and argued that matter was continuous. This put him at odds with philosophers called atomists, which included both Democritus (usually the only atomistic philosopher presented in chemistry textbooks with the implication that he came up with the idea of atoms when we know from the previous chapter this is a myth) who Aristotle critiques in his writings, and Epicurus, a follower of Democritus.