英美概况第一章总结

1、姓名：Hao Summary一、The period of ancient Greece1、Thales: Nature is rational Water is the basis of everything2、Anaximander: the world I terms of opposites3、Pythagoras: the entire natural world with numbers4、Heraclitus: change as the only unchanging reality in the universe opposites are inherently connec

2、ted5、Parmenides: everything was the same human reasoning could discover the hidden universal truth which was disguised by the façade of change6、Democritus: everything in the universe obeys the laws of necessity nothing actually changes the atomic theory Nature consisted of an unlimited number a

3、nd variety of atoms .When a plant or animal died, its atoms disperse and could be used again in new bodies. his view of the world is mechanistic7、Socrates: strongly disagreed with the Sophists some norms are universally valid and absolute a rationalist who had unshakable faith in human reason distin

4、guished between two types of knowledge: innate or a priori knowledge and empirical or not learned through the physical senses. A priori , or prior to birth , each person has Virtue which is not learned through the physical senses. Empirical or a posteriori knowledge is learned through the physical s

5、enses.8、Plato: everything in the material world dies , decomposed and disintegrates. there were a limited number of forms true , absolute and eternal knowledge must be a priori, or innate within human beings. Idealism Understanding the world of ideas leads to understanding the ultimate cause of the

6、physical world. He used earlier philosophical contributions to develop his Idealism into a comprehensive system which became a pillar of western thinking.9、Aristotle: the highest reality was gained through the physical senses nothing exists in consciousness that has not first been experienced throug

7、h the senses. specific objects represented an ideal form His motto was “Matter over Mind”. man has the innate ability to reason Since man had reasoning ability , he could organize physical experiences into categories. Reality consisted of “substance”, what objects are made of , and “form”, each obje

8、cts specific characteristic or what it can do. the modern explanation that moisture in the clouds cool and condense into raindrops which fall to the earth by the force of gravity developed four causes for why events occur in the natural world founded the science of logic the earth was the center of

9、universe二、The Middle Ages1、St. Augustine: (influences by Platos Idealism) man has a body and a soul; all human history is a struggle between the materialistic and the spiritual worlds.2、St. Thomas Aquinas: He believed that he could demonstrate the existence of God , based on both innate reason and f

10、aith.三、The Renaissance1、Nicholaus Copernicus: the Polish astronomer2、Galileo Galilei: the Italian scientist and mathematician 3、Johann Kepler: the German astronomer; demonstrated that the world was only a small part of an infinite universe.4、Isaac Newton: laws of motion explained all visible motions

11、.5、Francis Bacon: wrote the first description of the modern scientific method : constructing a hypothesis; conducting an experiment to test the hypothesis; and reaching conclusions based on the experiment.6、Thomas Hobbes: His harsh description of the materialistic, selfish society is very different

12、from either Platos Republic or Christianitys idealism.7、Rene Descartes: reason was the only path to knowledge agreed with thinkers who relied on mathematics, he used logic to reason through complex problems in other fields knowledge the human body is a perfect machine, following natural laws his dua

13、lism separated mind and matter into two great , mutually exclusive and mutually exhaustive divisions of the universe. “I think ; therefore , I am” He has been called the father of modern Rationalism and the father of modern western philosophy.8、John Locke: the modern father of Empiricism ideas come

14、from sense experiences and are processed in the mind through thinking. He combined thinking, reasoning, believing and doubting into a single concept which he named “reflection”. the blank mind Locke asked his next question , “Is the world really the way a person perceives it?” His answer was both “Y

15、es” and “No”. He advocated the equality of the sexes; the separation of powers within a government; and the natural rights of man. ideas come from the minds reflection on physical world9、David Hume: the most important Empiricist of his age. He was skeptical about all we claim to know. He argued that

16、 people have two types of perception: impressions and ideas. Based on sense experience, impressions are original and immediate. He opposed all ideas and appearances that could not be traced to sense perceptions, including religious knowledge. Humes philosophy broke the final link between medieval fa

17、ith and contemporary knowledge. He agreed with Locke that a child has no preconceived opinions. A child perceives the world as it is, based on his experiences. analysis of the law of causation(means that everything that happens has a cause). He argued that both thunder and lightening are the results

18、 of a third event, electric discharge. The laws of nature are what we expect, rather than what is reasonable. Hume did recognize the existence of unbreakable and eternal natural laws. ideas come from the minds reflection on the physical world10、George Berkeley: a religious leader knowledge is based

19、on experience, and material objects only exist in their physical forms. ideas come from the mind of a supernatural All-Perceive the foundation of all scientific knowledge is sense experience. reason is secondary to sense-experience.四、Modern Philosophy: Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, they wrote abo

20、ut Nature, Rationalism and human rights based on natural law.1、Immanuel Kant: He combined elements of both Rationalism and Empiricism into one new comprehensive system to explain how humans know the world. He agreed with the Empiricists that knowledge came from sensory experiences. He agreed with th

21、e Rationalists that the mind had a priori knowledge which influenced the interpretation of sensory experiences. both space and time are a priori categories imposed on sensory experience by the human mind sensory experiences can be true knowledge since the minds categories both shape and conform to t

22、hese experiences. God , free choice ,and immortality probably exist, since they are all necessary for mortality to exist. believed that the law of causality was one of the a priori categories of the human mind. He claimed that humans could only achieve a disagree of probability in determining the ca

23、use of a given event. Kant believed that all change has cause and that the law of causality was eternal and absolute humans have a dual nature He argued that people must assume the existence of God and behave morally “categorical imperative” He wrote some words on morality that were still resonate t

24、oday.2、Romanticism Universal Romanticism National Romanticism3、Georg Hegel： He did not think eternal truths existed. the dialectical process a thought is usually based on previous thoughts dialectics五、Modern Philosophical Trends1、Charles Darwin: human beings were members of the animal kingdom2、Alber

25、t Einstein: portrayed a universe very differently from the mechanical universe described in Newtons laws3、Existentialism 1) Friedrich Nietzsche: moral action should come from a strong superhero 2) Henri Bergson: Reason perceives the material world, but Intuition could perceive the life force which p

26、ervades the world. 3) Jean-Paul Sartre: man is the only living creature that is conscious of its own existence. Existence takes precedence over all other experiences.4、Positivism 1) Ernst Mach: phenomena are neutral, having neither physical nor mental status. He claimed that science should only describe phenomena that could be perceived through the senses. 2) Bertrand Russell: He argued that concepts and arguments are constructed of “atomic”, or smallest propositions, that