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SSFT Midterm- People Questions and Answers 2024
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SSFT Midterm- People
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SSFT Midterm- PeopleArchimedes - answer287-212 BC Buoyancy Principle.
Perhaps the apex of Greek natural philosophy.
Chief engineer for King Heiron of Syracuse.
Thomas Aquinas - answer1225-1274 The "Dumb Ox."
Greatest scholastic theologian.
Synthesized an apologetic of faith and reason from Aristotle and church doctrine.
Used "quaestio" method.
Robert Grosseteste - answer British scholar and bishop, important commentator of
Aristotle, wrote on induction and confirmation, used empirical method to study lenses,
admired by Roger Bacon
Jean Buridan - answer(1300-1358), Arts Master at the University of Paris
• Helped develop impetus theory
• developed a scheme within the Aristotelian system to explain the motion of a projectile
after it had left the projector (hand, bow, catapult, etc.) BUT that had problems
w/Aristotle too
• thus not exactly an early form of the modern concepts of impetus and inertia, given the
reliance on Aristotelian causation theory rather than more careful experimentation but
certainly an advance (note quotation next page)
• still, Buridan was seen by later theorists such as Descartes and Newton as anticipating
(even though modern scholars seem to want to deny this!)
Roger Bacon - answerEnglish Franciscan, "One Perfect Wisdom," early proponent of
the empirical method, one of his great achievements was the "Opus Majus"
Johannes Kepler - answerGerman "evangelical," convinced of mathematical precision
and elegance in nature, puzzled over an eight-minute difference between calculation
and reality
Isaac Newton - answerEnglish, trained at Cambridge, provided the explanatory
apparatus needed for Copernican theory. Gave laws of motion. Devout Christian
despite the efforts recent historians have made to discredit this.
Galileo - answerpart of the late Medieval Voluntarist tradition, made many astronomical
discoveries (moons around Jupiter, phases of planet Venus, etc.), defended
Copernicanism
, Hesiod: Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days - answerMatter pre-existent, in the
form of chaos, or a "yawning." Very primal. Theogony 108 ff. Different from Ovid's Idea
of chaos in Metamorphoses, who gave it a modern definition - "disorder."
Separation of creation or ordering from chaos.
Chaos begot Ge, Tartarus, Eros, Erebus, Night. These are very primeval gods.
Ge begot Uranus, Mountains, Pontus.
From Ge and Uranus was "born" the Titans
The Olympians were created from Oceanus and Tethys (Homer, Iliad 14.201), and later
a battle ensued between the Titans (Cronus) and the Olympians (Zeus). Zeus wins and
the Titans enchained.
C. S. Lewis - answerLay theologian, and Christian apologist "... centuries of belief in a
God who combined 'the personal energy of Jehovah' with the 'rationality of a Greek
philosopher' first produced that firm expectation of systematic order which rendered
possible the birth of modern science. Men became scientific because they expected
Law in Nature, and they expected Law in Nature because they expected a Legislator. In
most modern scientists this belief has died. It will be interesting to see how long their
confidence in uniformity survives it. ... We may be living nearer than we suppose to the
end of the Scientific Age."
John Philoponus - answerAn example of a Greek natural philosopher and Christian in
the time of the early Byzantine Empire.
• Highly critical of Aristotelian thought
• Understood that objects slowed down because of friction. Foreshadowed concept of
inertia (Theory of Impetus) and therefore Buridan's and Galileo's work.
• Earth and celestial bodies made of same kind of matter.
• There is a vacuum between objects in space.
• But he was harshly criticized and there was no institution of science. His work was
ignored for 600 years.
Aristotle - answerstudent of Plato, developed the Four Causes idea
a. History : Plato & Alexander
b. Starts with the senses, so more "bottom-up" than Plato - inductive and more empirical
c. Start with individual things to learn general properties of that kind of thing: dogs, say;
Excellent zoologist
d. Still the realm of thought superior.
e. Change happens because things want to fulfill their potential and move to like things.
f. Teleology: the acorn has the potential to be a tree.
g. Structure-function relationships
h. The composition of the Universe: Earth, air fire, water and quintessence
i. Geocentric Universe.
j. Aristotle's Theory of Change—Four Causes idea
k. Formal cause - the form received by the thing
l. Material cause - the matter underlying the form
m. Efficient cause - the agency bringing about the change
n. Final Cause - the purpose served by the change - teleology - structure & function
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