Danny Whitford

Francis Bacon, an English scientific philosopher of the late 16th and early 17th centuries, is best known for his advocacy of the scientific method during the scientific revolution. Also known as the Baconian Method, his scientific method revolves around inductive reasoning through which a series of conclusions can be made. He is known as the “Father of the Scientific Method” and the “Father of Experimental Science”.

One of Bacon's most famous works is his History of Life and Death, in which he explains his observations and experimental conclusions about the prolongation of life by use of natural medicines and practices. His experimental approach to science with the use of inductive reasoning and trust of his senses was very influential in the Enlightenment during the 18th century. Bacon's scientific method formed the basis for modern science, and nearly all major scientific conclusions today rely on the inductive reasoning through observations of the senses that Bacon advocated.

Nicolas Malebranche (Mal-brahnch), a French rationalist philosopher of the 17th and early 18th centuries, focused on rationalizing God's existence by means of the natural world rather than purely on faith and spirituality. His works, comparable to those of St. Augustine and René Descartes (Day-cart), attempt to show the active role of God in all aspects of the world and of human nature itself.

Malebranche (Mal-brahnch) asserted that all human reasoning, thought, and cognitive ability comes directly from God. Thus, he argued that our cognitive ability is the only sense that can be fully trusted because our other senses' understanding of the world is constantly changing. This line of thinking is similar to that of Descartes (Day-cart), but whereas Descartes (Day-cart) believed that all ideas were held mentally within the individual, Malebranche (Mal-brahnch) believed that all ideas are attained through God and held in Him. Thus, logic will lead someone to objective truth while reliance on other senses will lead someone to subjective understandings of the world.

David Hume, a Scottish empiricist philosopher of the mid 18th century, heavily influenced the course of western philosophy through his view of human nature and his new take on skepticism, for which he is best known. In a nutshell, Hume argued that conclusions made based on past experiences are unsubstantial and don't hold up against reason. He dismissed the idea of cause and effect, because that idea rests on the assumption that the future will always repeat the past, which he argues is not true. If cause and effect were to exist as a law of nature, then free will could not exist. Because both the law of "cause and effect" and free will cannot coexist, and because we experience free will first hand, Hume asserts that there is no such law of "cause and effect" but merely a strong correlation between certain causes and certain effects. While he conceded that the use of assumptions for a variety of reasons can be beneficial to society, Hume still held that the only knowledge we can rely on is the knowledge obtained directly from our senses.

Hume's greatest influence on philosophy came about through his first work, "A Treatise of Human Nature". This work outlined his views on skepticism, free will, and moral obligations of the human race. Although it was met by disapproval by his colleagues, it gained recognition later in his life. His other works, such as "Political Discourses", about economic theory influenced his friend Adam Smith who went on to be the father of capitalism. Though David Hume covered a wide variety of subjects, his greatest works were those about skepticism and human nature.

Adam Smith was a Scottish liberal philosopher whose works focused on moral philosophy and the theory of the political economy. He is best known for two works called “The Theory of Moral Sentiments” and “The Wealth of Nations”. The former provided the ethical underpinnings to support the latter. In “The Theory of Moral Sentiments”, Smith asserts that morality revolves around sympathy and the desire of humans to make others happy, but humans still have a natural tendency toward self-interest. His “The Wealth of Nations” earned him the title of the “Father of Modern Capitalism”, as it focuses on what best builds a nation's wealth. His free market theory, outlined in “The Wealth of Nations”, establishes the basis of capitalism and argues that humans' natural self-interest and competition can lead to economic prosperity that is beneficial to everyone in a system without regulation.

Johann Schiller (Joe-hahn Shiller) was a German idealist philosopher during the late 18th century. Most of his works focused on the topics of ethics and aesthetics, which is a branch of philosophy dealing with the creation and adoration of beauty in culture and nature. He expanded upon Christopher Wieland's idea of the ideal human whose emotions are backed by reason and logic so that moral duty and personal desire do not conflict. Schiller asserted that the most pure, moral, and beautiful soul is one that finds no conflict between morality and human nature. He claimed that the most significant distinction between the beauty of the human soul and the simplicity of the animal mind is the existence of humans' free will. Through free will, we can decide to defy our natural instincts in order to stay true to the moral path, such as when someone ignores the instinct of self-preservation and sacrifices himself for another.

In Schiller's most crucial work, “The Aesthetic Education of a Man”, he illustrates an ideal utopia in which all humans have made the connection between moral duty and personal desire to attain pure and beautiful souls. In this society, everyone is content and everything is beautiful because everyone's free will is being exercised with logic and reason so that morality is being perfectly demonstrated. Schiller generally theorized that the moral standards of a society can be raised by simply teaching people to back their emotions with logic.

Friedrich Engels (Freed-Rick En-gels) was a 19th century German materialist philosopher. His most famous accomplishment is that he helped Karl Marx father the Marxist theory. Put simply, this economic and social theory revolved around the timeless struggle between the ruling classes and oppressed classes in nearly every society. Because such a conflict seemed to always be the result of capitalism, the Marxist theory asserted that the working class should overthrow the system of capitalism so that, for the first time in human history, the ruling class would be the majority of the population rather than a select few elites. This theoretical system, comparable to the system of socialism, would result in a society that responds to human needs rather than individual profits. These ideas are expressed in “The Communist Manifesto”, which Engels co-authored with Karl Marx. Though this theory is named after Marx, Engels was just as responsible for its creation. In general, Friedrich Engels believed that a society that responds to the needs of the many would be more successful with less class struggle than a society that allows the select few elite to take advantage of the working class.

Edmund Husserl was a late 19th and early 20th century German existentialist (ex-is-STEN-shaul-ist) philosopher who initiated the study of phenomenology. He agreed with skeptics in that we cannot know whether the objects we perceive actually exist objectively outside of our perception, but he asserted that such objects at least undoubtedly exist as objects of our own consciousness. Thus, even though such objects may not exist in objectivity, we can still observe them and make valid conclusions without making any false assumptions. This basic principle of phenomenology, known as phenomenological reduction, basically states that all objects, regardless of whether they are of pure imagination or part of the objective world, can be validly observed.

He took this theory a step further and concluded that consciousness has no existence outside of the objects it observes. He asserts that the human mind is conscious because it is able to direct itself toward things that exist outside of itself. It is able to take in information about a thing that exists in the world outside of itself, store that data within itself, and then perceive and recall details about the object. Because all knowledge of things that exist outside one's mind is derived from such a process within the mind rather than directly from the object itself, information that originates from the mind is just as valid as that which has been translated through the mind. From this, Husserl concluded that the skeptic point of view is irrelevant because valid conclusions can be made regardless of whether a thing exists in the objective world or merely within one's conscious.

Albert Camus was a 20th century French materialist philosopher.

Emile Durkheim (ehm-eel Derk-hime)