Chapter 2b Psyche

epistemology 

• Branch of psyche

• Philosophic questions need to be asked to see what method of obtaining knowledge is more reliable than others 

Rationalism

Belief that everything is connected, the finding of one thing can lead to the finding of another (deductive reasoning) “top down”

Father of Rationalism

René Descartes

Empiricism

Unlike Descartes who thought that ideas are inane and must be used to deduce what we don’t know, Hume believed, that we derive ideas from our observations and memory, direct sensory experiences of the external world (inductive reasoning) “bottom up” 

Father of Empiricism

David Hume

Prior Knowledge

Hume argues that humans rational come from past experiences and knowledge

• Ex. A man finds a watch on a desert island, and he believes that a man or group of people must have visited the island bc the watch is not normally found there  

Claudius Ptolemy

• Added to Aristotles model and suggested that Planets weren’t attached to spheres, but circles called Epicycles that were attached to spheres called Deferent 

• Planets revolved on epicycles while the epicycles revolved attached to Deferents 

Empirical observations

used by Galileo to support Copernicus heliocentric model 

Science

special process of gathering, analyzing, and making inferences about data  

First 3 steps of scientific process

• Identify a prob and generate research questions 

• Formulate a hypothesis 

• Observe and analyze data

Last 2 steps of scientific process

• Make conclusions and report the results 

• Refine and revise general knowledge and generate more question