Renaissance Scientific Movement - Metaphysics
METAPHYSICS
Edwin Arthur Burtt (essay date 1924)
SOURCE: An introduction to The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science, revised edition, Doubleday Anchor Books, 1954, pp. 15–35.
[In the following excerpt, Burtt traces the development of ideas and changes in terminology concerning man's relation to the world.]
A. Historical Problem Suggested by the Nature of Modern Thought
How curious, after all, is the way in which we moderns think about our world! And it is all so novel, too. The cosmology underlying our mental processes is but three centuries old—a mere infant in the history of thought—and yet we cling to it with the same embarrassed zeal with which a young father fondles his new-born baby. Like him, we are ignorant enough of its precise nature; like him, we nevertheless take it piously to be ours and allow it a subtly pervasive and unhindered control over our thinking.
The world-view of any...
[The entire page is 19489 words long]
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