Reduced SSFT Midterm 2022

Aristotle

His work on natural philosophy was banned at Univ of Paris because he was thought to contradict scripture.

Auguste Comte

Father of positivistic view of science and articulated the Law of human progress

Rene Descartes

interested in emerging science, decided against publishing his manuscript (heliocentric model)

he thought he could prove through natural reason

more well known for his philosophical work with his famous saying “cogito, ergo sum”

Galileo

mathematician and scientist from pisa who was threatened with excommunication. Developed heliocentrism

Stephen Jay Gould

American evolutionary biologist that defended NOMA

Thomas Kuhn

a philosopher of science that wrote “The structure of scientific revolutions” and argued for what he called “naturalized epistemology”

Law of human progress

human thinking necessarily passes through three stages: theological, philosophical, and scientific

naturalism

a theory denying that an event or object has a supernatural significance. Specifically: the doctrine that scientific laws are adequate to account for all phenomena

Ronald Numbers

Historian of science that offers multiple "midscale patterns" that help set the landscape by which we understand the relationship between science and religion (naturalization, privatization, secularization, globalization, radicalization)

William Paley

Argued that mechanisms like a heart and eyes show a clear sign of purpose and designer, He uses the example that a watch can not self assembled its self but needs a master craftsman

Alvin Plantinga

He wrote articles supporting what he called Augustinian science and supported Christians being active in science

Positivism

Gradual progression of human knowledge towards truth was founded on beliefs held by Auguste Comte

Ptolemy

astronomer-mathematician who proposed a theory that the Earth was at the center of the universe

Bertrand Russell

knowledge is “instinctive belief and reasoning about those beliefs - non contradictory (harmonious) systems of belief”

Bishop James Ussher

Used the bible to predict the age of the universe and predicted that the universe was made in 4004 BC

A.D. White

Worked with William Draper to form the Conflict Thesis which is how historians understand the relationship between science and Christianity.