Rationalism and Scientific Development: the Enlightenment contribution

Rationalism and Scientific Development: the Enlightenment contribution

In spite of being a relatively new field of knowledge, the authoritativeness attributed to the sciences outcomes in the twentieth-first centuries is impressive. The term ‘science’, created only in the eighteenth century, was used to define all the studies of the Nature (Outram, 2005). Across the years, the sciences’ engagement with universal truths, perfect methods and results attracted many specialists to the research fields, and gained the general population’s trust – not due the subject of the study, but due to its logical methods and reliable professionals involved in the processes (Lee and Scheufele, 2006). However, the rationalistic movement, which characterizes the Enlightenment, is already also modifying the acceptability of scientific knowledge among non-scientific communities (Allum et al., 2008). It can be considered a consequence of the unique statements which are possible to be objectively identified as Enlightenment thoughts: to question and doubt (Outram, 2005). On the other hand, the authority which characterizes the scientific knowledge today can possibly have it origins in the nineteenth century, when the scientific progress become useful for both an emergent economic system (based in the ‘capital’) and a new political order, gaining the support of important philosophers such as Karl Marx, and the bourgeoisie funding (Perelman, 1978 and May and Powell, 2008: 20-21).  This essay will critically demonstrate that, despite of the essential contributions of the Enlightenment to establishment of a rationalistic thought, the authority attributed to the contemporary scientific knowledge is, nonetheless, a consequence of the improvements in the scientific method itself.

In the eighteenth-century, thinkers have classified the Enlightenment as a valuation process of the rationalistic thought, which was able to conduct the human-kind to its maturity. Firstly, it is important to establish a temporal context to the Enlightenment’s primary discussions, as it is not possible to precisely define a term, nor for its beginning or its end. As presented by Outram (2005: 2), due to the historical question published in the German Berlinische Monatsschrift newspaper, ‘What is Enlightenment?’, the first debates about the Enlightenment concepts began in 1783; at that moment, philosophers such as Immanuel Kant and Moses Mendelssohn proposed similar answers to the enquire: ‘… a series of processes and problems than a list of intellectual projects susceptible to quick and definitive description.’ (ibid: 3). Indeed, much of the Enlightenment period overlaps with Renaissance and Reformation movements, being the Renaissance the predecessor of the rationalistic thought and empiricism, presented the former in René Descartes (1596-1650) and the latter by Francis Bacon (1561-1626) (Ashley, 2002: 75-76). The role given by the Renaissance in the construction of the Enlightenment ideals was essential: as described by Ashley (2002), the necessity of a cultural change, translated in the first moment into the revival of the Classical taught from Greece and Rome, led the sixteenth-century thinkers to important theological enquires and ruptures. And by the beginning of the seventeenth century, was already possible to identify the desire of philosophers and scientists to empirically prove the God’s existence through the ‘natural laws’ (Outram, 2005: 48). Thus, the empiricism was first introduced by Bacon and his theory of induction for the scientific method: in order to be generalizable, the experiments should be repeated until the recognition of a ‘workable hypothesis’ (Ashley, 2002: 75-76); on the other hand, Descartes presented the deduction as an essential part of scientific thought, where denying and doubting statements reasonably were the starting-point to the natural events understanding (Ashley, 2002: 76). Despite of the methodological differences, both philosophers claimed the rational thought as an essential premise of the real knowledge; and they were followed by new thinkers, such as Huygens and Newton, who improved the scientific methodology and remained applying the rationalism in their studies (Ashley, 2002: 77-78). Towards all the new ideals of a knowledge accessible to every capable human, it is possible to observe an other important Enlightenment aspect: the main ideologists of these movements (Renaissance, Reformation and Enlightenment) belong to a higher level society and, had their works also influenced by the bourgeoisie and nobility’s interests (Outram, 2005: 11; Brigs, 2001: 172 and Hampson, 2001).

The constructions of the Renaissance, Reformation and even of the Enlightenment, in terms of ideals and paradigms, did not reach society in general; it stayed restricted to philosophers and an small elite who had access to educational and cultural institutions, such as universities, associations and coffee houses (Hampson, 1990: 267 and Outram, 2005: 14). As presented in Brigs (2001) and in May and Powell (2008), the political threats of the nobility against the absolutism encouraged the philosophical thinking of social structures in general – including politics, economics and the sociological perceptions. The rationalism and the scientific method introduced by the Renaissance in the end of sixteenth century became a fundamental basis of the social changes aimed by the elite of eighteenth-century thinkers; Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, for example, identified in that ‘mind’s revolution’ a possibility of applying the scientific methods to the economics and ‘recover’ it in the bourgeoisie’s decline (Perelman, 1978: 861). Within these two centuries, the recognition of the ratio as condition to obtaining the ‘truth’ – or the method, as valuated in Marx and Engels (Perelman, 1978: 861), thus to become free from ignorance and manipulation, generated a series of ruptures and important cultural modifications.

Named as ‘modern world’ by Bertrand Russell, the rationalism applied to the sciences began to produce real technical advances in the natural laws acknowledgement; as consequence, Christian thinkers had to rely on the rationalism, but some without abandoning the idea of proving the God’s existence (Ashley, 2002: 77-78). For Hume and Newton, for example, to eyewitness miracle was not enough to determine its reality – thus an empirical methodology applied to the miracle’s analysis could result the rational justification of the religions (Outram, 2005: 42). As advocated by Ashley (2002) and Hampson (1990), almost all the main thinkers from the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were also religious persons; mostly Catholics, and involved themselves in what the author claims as the ‘dangerous project’ of modification in ‘religious conceptions’, which aimed in one perspective to objectively explain the faith and God’s wills; and from other point of view, to conduct the human-kind to ‘spiritual-freedom’ (Outram, 2005: 32). Whereas for Kant (1784), in his answer to ‘What is Enlightenment?’, the idea of freedom was not directly related only with the religious sense, but also to every guidance model – which could be represented by an institution (e.g. government, church), a person (e.g. a master) or even to general beliefs imposed to the men (e.g. God, authority). Further, as May and Powell (2008: 9) asserts, the rationalism itself, originated in the Renaissance period, did not target specific cultural aspects to be modified: it established the sense of ‘argumentation’ and ‘proofs’ aiming the identification of a ‘universal logic’. According to Outram (2005: 3-4), i the historians opinion, the Enlightenment incorporated the rationalism as generalised necessity of the population to have a different source of guidance – logical instead of supernatural. As example, the author mentions some religious movements, such as Deism, which adopted the rationalistic philosophy by simply denying that knowledge could be acquired by revelations or faith, without, although, deny God’s existence itself. And analysing all the religious transformations in the eighteenth century, it is also possible to infer the extent to which the Enlightenment have emphasised the faith in the natural laws; By enforcing the Enlightenment as a cultural change which impacted all the sectors of the society (and later in all levels), Michel Foucault described that it was not science which modified the religious thought, but the search for the ‘reason’ itself that also took place within theology (Outram, 2005: 35, 48). Thus, the raise of the Enlightenment as the cultural change in peoples beliefs, replacing the supernatural knowledge to a logic and empirical process, by no means it is mutually exclusive; in fact, it provided the tools for the society to have its own understanding about natural laws, and for what the religion remained developing an important role: motivating the reasonable study of the nature.