Naturphilosophy of the Renaissance

On the basis of the largest discoveries and technological progress in the Renaissance, a kind of natural philosophy (philosophy of nature) develops. It was she who had a decisive influence on the development of philosophy and natural science of modern times.

Naturphilosophy was often pantheistic, ᴛ.ᴇ. , without directly denying the existence of God, she identified him with nature. A similar natural philosophy was developed Bernardino Telesio(1509-1588), who founded an academy in Naples for the experimental study of nature, and the closest adviser to Pope Pius II, cardinal, scientist, philosopher Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464).

N. Kuzansky, researchers of his work are considered the first outstanding representative of the pantheistic philosophy of the Renaissance. He brings God closer to nature, attributing divine attributes to the latter and, above all, infinity in space; he also opposes the theological principle of the finiteness of the Universe in space and its creation in time, although he stipulates that the world is not infinite in the sense in which God appears as an ʼʼabsolute maximumʼʼ. But still, ʼʼ cannot be considered final, because it does not have boundaries between which it is enclosed ʼʼ; according to N. Kuzansky, the Earth does not constitute the center of the world, but the so-called sphere fixed stars is not a circle that encloses the world.
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N. Kuzansky expressed a number of dialectical ideas in relation to the understanding of nature: he saw the unity of opposites, one and many, possibility and reality, infinity and finiteness in nature.

Deep ideas were expressed by him in the theory of knowledge. He justified the concept scientific method, the problem of creativity - the limitlessness of human possibilities, especially in the field of knowledge. At the same time, his pantheism is also manifested in cognition: God is beforehand everything that should be. The beginning shines through in everything, and a person is able to think endlessly, overcoming any opposites 1 .

The philosophical views of Nicholas of Cusa influenced the subsequent natural philosophical thought of the Renaissance.

One of the greatest geniuses of the Renaissance was Giordano Bruno (1548-1600). He rejected all church dogmas about the creation of the world, about the alleged beginning of the world and its coming end: he developed the heliocentric ideas of Copernicus, arguing that there is an infinite number of worlds of the Universe. In the work ʼʼOn infinity. To the universe and the worlds, he declared: ʼʼ I proclaim the existence of innumerable separate worlds, like the world of this Earth. Together with Pythagoras, I consider her a luminary, like the Moon, other planets, other stars, the number of which is infinite. All these celestial bodies make up countless worlds. Οʜᴎ form an infinite Universe in infinite space...ʼʼ 2

At the same time, J. Bruno wrote a lot about God. He admitted | the universal animation of matter. But his God is the Universe, which is both creative and created, both cause and effect. Pantheism in these arguments of J. Bruno is evident. There is no God standing above the world and dictating his laws to it;

God is dissolved in nature. He devotes entire hymns to material nature: matter is a living and active principle.

Bruno's natural-philosophical views are combined with elements of elemental dialectics, which he draws in many respects from ancient sources. Noting the constant variability of all things and phenomena, he argued that over the course of many centuries the surface of the Earth changes, the seas turn into continents, and continents into seas. His arguments about man as a microcosm and his connection with the macrocosm (nature) are interesting. Man is a part of nature, his boundless love for the knowledge of the infinite, the power of his mind elevate him above the world 3 .

In 1592 ᴦ. Bruno was accused of heresy and imprisoned in 1600 ᴦ. he was burned at the stake.

The works of great philosophical importance Galileo Goliley (1564-1642). He gained the fame of ʼʼColumbus of the skyʼʼ by discovering craters and ridges on the Moon (in his view of ʼʼmountainsʼʼ and ʼʼʼʼʼ), he saw countless clusters of stars that form the Milky Way, saw the satellites of Jupiter, examined, thanks to the telescope he designed, spots on the Sun, etc. .

All these discoveries marked the beginning of his fierce polemics with scholastics and churchmen who defended the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic picture of the world. The Roman Church decides to ban the propaganda of the views of Copernicus, and Galileo continues to work on improving the evidence for the truth of the theory.

Dealing with questions of mechanics, Galileo discovered some of its fundamental laws, which testified that there is natural vitality. This idea has been reinforced discovered by Kepler laws of planetary motion around the sun. All this allowed Galileo for the first time in the history of mankind to introduce the concept law nature in his ʼʼDialogue on the two main systems of the world - Ptolemaic and Copernicanʼʼ. This book served as a pretext for accusing Galileo of heresy by the Catholic Church. The scientist was brought to trial by the Roman Inquisition. In 1633 ᴦ. a trial took place over Galileo, at which he was forced to formally renounce his ʼʼerrorsʼʼ. At the same time, the court itself attracted even more attention to the ideas of Galileo. Scientists, not only astronomers, but also mathematicians, physicists, and natural scientists became more and more convinced of the correctness of the ideas not only of Galileo, but also of Copernicus and Bruno. The Thinker actually emerged victorious.

Galileo called for discarding all fantastic constructions and studying nature empirically, looking for natural, actually natural reasons for explaining phenomena. From his point of view, all phenomena can be reduced to their exact quantitative ratio. And in this regard, he believed, mathematics and mechanics lie at the base of all sciences.

He was a passionate promoter of experience as the only path that can lead to truth. He believed that two methods could lead to the truth: resolutive and compositive. The resolutive, or analytical, method means the decomposition of the phenomenon under study into simpler elements, its constituents. Composite is a synthetic method, consisting in understanding the phenomenon as a whole. Both of these methods are always applied together and form a scientific methodology that also includes experiment.

Galileo introduces quantitative analysis, experimental-inductive and abstract-deductive methods of studying nature into scientific methodology.

The scientific methodology of Galileo relied primarily on mathematics and mechanics and thus determined the nature of his worldview orientation as mechanistic materialism. Galileo emphasized in every possible way that nature, its secrets, cannot be known without mastering mathematical language. In the work “The Assayer of Gold”, he points out that a particle of matter has a certain form, size, a certain place in space, movement or rest, but they have neither color nor smell, for the latter represent co6q perception of the subject. Thus he spoke out against the hylozoism of matter, but at the same time he opened the way to the negation of the objective basis of such qualities as taste, color, smell, and sound.

God appears in Galileo as the prime mover, who told the planets to move. Further, nature began to have its own objective laws, which sciences should study. Τᴀᴋᴎᴍ ᴏϬᴩᴀᴈᴏᴍ, Galileo was one of the first to formulate deistic, view of nature, which then met with thinkers of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Naturphilosophy of the Renaissance - the concept and types. Classification and features of the category "Renaissance Naturphilosophy" 2014, 2015.

Naturphilosophy of the Renaissance

and the principle of the coincidence of opposites……………………….3-6

2.Theory of Nicolaus Copernicus……………………………………..….6-8

3. The infinite universe of Giordano Bruno…………………………8-10

4. Mechanistic picture of the world Galileo Galilei………………10-17

List of used literature……………………………...17

Introduction.

The 15th and 16th centuries were a time of great changes in the economy, political and cultural life of European countries. The rapid growth of cities and the development of crafts, and later the emergence of manufactory production, the rise of world trade, which involved ever more remote areas in its orbit, the gradual deployment of the main trade routes from the Mediterranean to the north, which ended after the fall of Byzantium and the great geographical discoveries of the end of the 15th century and the beginning of 16th century changed the face of medieval Europe. Almost everywhere cities are now coming to the fore. Once the most powerful forces of the medieval world - the empire and the papacy - experienced a deep crisis. In the 16th century, the decaying Holy Roman Empire of the German nation became the scene of the first two anti-feudal revolutions - the Great Peasants' War in Germany and the Netherlands Uprising. The transitional nature of the era, taking place in all areas of life, the process of liberation from medieval fetters and, at the same time, the still underdevelopment of emerging capitalist relations, could not but affect the characteristics of the artistic culture and aesthetic thought of that time.

All changes in the life of society were accompanied by a broad renewal of culture - the flourishing of the natural and exact sciences, literature in national languages, and, especially, philosophy. Originating in the cities of Italy, this renewal then captured other European countries. The advent of printing opened unprecedented opportunities for the dissemination of literary and scientific works, and more regular and close communication between countries contributed to the widespread penetration of new scientific trends, the development of radically new views on the world, on the problems of philosophy.

1. Renaissance interpretation of dialectics. Nicholas of Cusa

and the principle of the coincidence of opposites.

One of the characteristic representatives of the Renaissance philosophy was Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464). An analysis of his teaching makes it especially clear to see the differences between the ancient Greek and Renaissance interpretations of being.

Nicholas of Cusa, like most philosophers of his time, was guided by the tradition of Neoplatonism. However, at the same time, he rethought the teachings of the Neoplatonists, starting with the central concept of the unity for them. Plato and the Neo-Platonists, as we know, characterize the one through the opposite of the “other”, not the one. This characteristic goes back to the Pythagoreans and Eleatics, who opposed the one to the many, the limit to the boundless. Kuzansky, who shares the principles of Christian monism, rejects ancient dualism and declares that "nothing is opposite to the one." And from here he draws a characteristic conclusion: “the one is everything” - a formula that sounds pantheistic and directly anticipates the pantheism of Giordano Bruno.

This formula is unacceptable for Christian theism, which fundamentally distinguishes creation ("all") from the creator (single); but, no less important, it also differs from the concept of the Neoplatonists, who never identified the one with "all". This is where a new, renaissance approach to the problems of ontology appears. From the statement that the one has no opposite, Kuzansky concludes that the one is identical to the infinite, the infinite. The Infinite is that which nothing can be greater than, which is why Cusa calls it "maximum"; the same is the "minimum". Nicholas of Cusa thus discovered the principle of the coincidence of opposites (coincidentia oppositorum) - maximum and minimum. To make this principle clearer, Cusansky turns to mathematics, pointing out that as the radius of a circle increases to infinity, the circle turns into an infinite straight line. For such a maximum circle, the diameter becomes identical to the circle, moreover, not only the diameter, but also the center coincides with the circle, and thus the point (minimum) and the infinite line (maximum) are one and the same. The situation is similar with a triangle: if one of its sides is infinite, then the other two will also be infinite. Thus, it is proved that an infinite line is both a triangle, and a circle, and a ball.

The coincidence of opposites is the most important methodological principle of the philosophy of Nicholas of Cusa, which makes him one of the founders of the New European dialectics. In Plato, one of the greatest dialecticians of antiquity, we do not find the doctrine of the coincidence of opposites, since ancient Greek philosophy is characterized by dualism, the opposition of the idea (or form) and matter, the one and the infinite. On the contrary, the place of the one in Cusa is now occupied by the concept of actual infinity, which is, in fact, the combination of opposites - the one and the infinite.

Carried out, although not always consistently, the identification of the one with the infinite subsequently led to the restructuring of the principles not only of ancient philosophy and medieval theology, but also of ancient and medieval science - mathematics and astronomy.

The role that the indivisible (unit) played among the Greeks, introducing a measure, a limit both to beings as a whole and to each kind of being, is played by the infinite in Cusa - now it is entrusted with the function of being the measure of all things. If infinity becomes a measure, then paradox becomes synonymous with exact knowledge. And in fact, this is what follows from the premises adopted by Cusa: “... if one infinite line consisted of an infinite number of segments in a span, and the other of an infinite number of segments in two spans, they would still necessarily be equal because infinity cannot be greater than infinity. As you can see, in the face of infinity, all finite differences disappear, and two becomes equal to one, three, and any other number.

In geometry, as Nicholas of Cusa shows, the situation is the same as in arithmetic. The distinction between rational and irrational relations, on which the geometry of the Greeks rested, Cusa declares that it matters only for the lower mental ability - reason, and not reason. All mathematics, including arithmetic, geometry and astronomy, is, according to Cusansky, the product of the activity of the mind; reason just expresses its basic principle in the form of the prohibition of contradiction, that is, the prohibition to combine opposites. Nicholas of Cusa returns us to Zeno with his paradoxes of infinity, with the difference, however, that Zeno saw paradoxes as an instrument for the destruction of false knowledge, and Cusa as a means of creating true knowledge. True, this knowledge itself has a special character - it is "wise ignorance."

The thesis about the infinite as a measure introduces transformations into astronomy as well. If in the field of arithmetic and geometry the infinite as a measure transforms knowledge of finite ratios into an approximate one, then in astronomy this new measure introduces, in addition, the principle of relativity. And in fact: since the exact definition of the size and shape of the universe can be given only by referring it to infinity, then the center and the circle cannot be distinguished in it.

Kuzanets' reasoning helps to understand the connection between the philosophical category of the unified and the cosmological notion of the ancients about the presence of the center of the world, and thus about its finiteness. The identification of the one with the infinite that he carried out destroys the picture of the cosmos from which not only Plato and Aristotle, but also Ptolemy and Archimedes proceeded. For ancient science and most representatives of ancient philosophy, the cosmos was a very large, but finite body. And the sign of the finiteness of the body is the ability to distinguish in it the center and the periphery, the “beginning” and the “end”. According to Cusa, the center and circumference of the cosmos is God, and therefore, although the world is not infinite, it cannot be thought of as finite either, since it has no limits between which it would be closed.

2. Theory of Nicolaus Copernicus.

Through the entire bright life of Copernicus, from his student years in Krakow to the last days, the main thread runs - the great work of establishing a new system of the world, designed to replace the fundamentally incorrect geocentric system of Ptolemy.

Copernicus outlined the first outline of his theory in a work that is known under the Russian title as “Small commentary of Nicolaus Copernicus regarding the hypotheses he established about celestial movements”. This book was not published during the author's lifetime. In the "Small Commentary" after a brief preface, ending with a mention of the theory of concentric spheres of Eudex and Callippus, as well as the theory of Ptolemy, Nicolaus Copernicus points out the shortcomings of these theories, forcing him to propose his theory.

This new theory comes from the following requirements:

There is no single center for all celestial orbits or spheres.

The center of the Earth is not the center of the world, but only the center of gravity and the lunar orbit.

All spheres move around the Sun, as around their center, as a result of which the Sun is the center of the whole world.

The ratio of the distance from the Earth to the Sun to the height of the firmament (that is, to the distance to the sphere of fixed stars) is less than the ratio of the radius of the Earth to the distance from it to the Sun, moreover, the distance from the Earth to the Sun is negligible compared to the height of the firmament.

Every movement that is noticed in the firmament of heaven is connected not with any movement of the firmament itself, but with the movement of the earth. The earth, together with the elements surrounding it (air and water), makes during the day full turn around their unchanging poles, while the firmament of heaven and the sky located on it remain motionless.

What seems to us to be the movement of the Sun is in fact connected with the movements of the Earth and our sphere, together with which we revolve around the Sun, like any other planet. Thus, the Earth has more than one movement.

Apparent straight and backward planetary movements, are caused not by their movements, but by the movement of the Earth. Therefore, the motion of the Earth itself is sufficient to explain many apparent irregularities in the sky.

These seven theses clearly outline the contours of the future heliocentric system, the essence of which lies in the fact that the Earth simultaneously moves around its axis and around the Sun.

Formulating the theses of his theory, Nicolaus Copernicus uses the concepts of astronomy of the early 16th century. So, in his theses, it is about the movement of spheres, and not about the movement of planets. For the movement of the planets was then explained by the movement of the spheres, each of which corresponded to a particular planet. The fifth thesis should be understood as that the sphere of the fixed stars does not participate in the motion of the planetary spheres, but remains motionless. And in the last thesis we are talking about the loops described by the planets in the sky due to the movement of the Earth around the Sun. In the theory of Copernicus, it turned out to be enough to accept the assumption that we observe the planets from a moving Earth, the plane of the orbit of which almost coincides with the planes of the orbits of other planets. This assumption greatly simplified the explanation of the loop-like motion of the planets in comparison with the complex system of epicycles and trims in Ptolemy's theory. The fourth thesis was extraordinarily important: no one before Copernicus, and most astronomers after his death, did not dare to attribute such huge dimensions to the Universe.

Having formulated the 7 provisions of his theory, Copernicus proceeds to describe the sequence of location celestial spheres(planets). Then Copernicus dwells on why the annual movement of the Sun in the sky should be explained only by the movement of the Earth.

The “Small Commentary” ends with the following statement: “Thus, only thirty-four circles are enough to explain the structure of the Universe and the entire round dance of the planets.” Copernicus was extraordinarily proud of his discovery, for he saw in it the most harmonious solution to the problem, preserving the principle by virtue of which all planetary movements can be interpreted as additions of circular motions.

3. The infinite universe of Giordano Bruno.

The provisions of Cusa contradict the principles of Aristotelian physics, based on the distinction between the higher - supralunar and lower - sublunar worlds. Kuzansky destroys the finite cosmos of ancient and medieval science, in the center of which is the motionless Earth. Thus, he prepares the Copernican revolution in astronomy, which eliminated the geocentrism of the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic picture of the world. Following Nicholas of Cusa, Copernicus, as mentioned above, uses the principle of relativity and bases a new astronomical system on it.

The tendency characteristic of Nicholas of Cusa to think of the highest principle of being as the identity of opposites (one and the infinite) was the result of a pantheistically colored rapprochement between God and the world, the creator with creation. This trend was further deepened by Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), who consistently created a pantheistic doctrine hostile to medieval theism. Giordano Bruno relied not only on Nicholas of Cusa, but also on the heliocentric astronomy of Nicolaus Copernicus. Copernicus destroys the most important principle of Aristotelian physics and cosmology, rejecting with it the idea of ​​the finiteness of the cosmos. Copernicus believes that the universe is immeasurable and limitless; he calls it "like infinity", at the same time showing that the dimensions of the Earth, but compared with the dimensions of the Universe, are vanishingly small.

By identifying the cosmos with an infinite deity, Bruno also obtains an infinite cosmos.

Further removing the boundary between the creator and creation, Bruno also destroys the traditional opposition of form - as the beginning of the indivisible, and therefore active and creative, on the one hand, and matter as the beginning of the infinite, and therefore passive, on the other. Bruno, therefore, not only conveys to nature itself what was attributed to God in the Middle Ages, namely, an active, creative impulse. He goes much further, taking away from the form and transferring to matter that principle of life and movement, which since the time of Plato and Aristotle was considered inherent in the form itself. Nature, according to Bruno, is "God in things."

Bruno's pantheism paved the way for a materialistic understanding of nature. It is not surprising that Bruno's teaching was condemned by the church as heretical. The Inquisition demanded that the Italian philosopher renounce his teachings. However, Bruno preferred death to renunciation, and in 1600 he was burned at the stake.

A new relationship between matter and form, a new understanding of matter testifies to the fact that in the 16th century a consciousness was formed that was essentially different from the ancient one.

If for the ancient Greek philosopher the limit is higher than the limitless, the complete and the whole is more beautiful than the unfinished, then for the philosopher of the Renaissance the possibility is richer than actuality, movement and becoming is preferable to motionless and unchanging being. And it is no coincidence that the concept of the infinite turns out to be especially attractive during this period: the paradoxes of actual infinity play the role of a kind of method not only for Nicholas of Cusa and Giordano Bruno, but also for such outstanding scientists of the late 16th and early 17th centuries as Galileo and Cavalieri.

4. Mechanistic picture of the world by Galileo Galilei.

The founder of the experimental-mathematical method of studying nature was the great Italian scientist Galileo Galilei (1564-1642). Leonardo da Vinci gave only outlines of such a method of studying nature, while Galileo left a detailed presentation of this method and formulated the most important principles of the mechanical world.

Galileo was born into the family of an impoverished nobleman in the city of Pisa (near Florence). Convinced of the barrenness of the scholastic

learning, he delved into the mathematical sciences. Later becoming a professor of mathematics at the University of Padua, the scientist launched an active research activity, especially in the field of mechanics and astronomy. For the triumph of the theory of Copernicus and the ideas expressed by Giordano Bruno, and consequently for the progress of the materialistic worldview in general, the astronomical discoveries made by Galileo with the help of the telescope he designed were of great importance. He discovered craters and ridges on the Moon (in his mind - "mountains" and "seas"), saw countless clusters of stars that form the Milky Way, saw satellites, Jupiter, saw spots on the Sun, etc. Thanks to these discoveries, Galileo acquired the all-European fame of the "Columbus of the sky." The astronomical discoveries of Galileo, primarily the satellites of Jupiter, became a clear proof of the truth of the heliocentric theory of Copernicus, and the phenomena observed on the Moon, which seemed to be a planet quite similar to the Earth, and spots on the Sun confirmed Bruno's idea of ​​the physical homogeneity of the Earth and sky. The discovery of the stellar composition of the Milky Way was an indirect proof of the innumerability of worlds in the Universe.

Renaissance philosophy

Introduction. "Renaissance" is a term that, as a historiographical category, came into use in the 19th century, in to a large extent thanks to the work of Jacob Burkgardt "The Culture of the Renaissance in Italy", which became the most famous and long served as a model and an indispensable guide. In work...

One of the characteristic representatives of the Renaissance philosophy was Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464). An analysis of his teaching makes it especially clear to see the differences between the ancient Greek and Renaissance interpretations of being.

7.1. Conditions for the rise and spread of Christianity The situation in the relationship between religion and philosophy began to change significantly after the emergence and establishment of Christianity in public life, which happened in the 1st century of our era. The qualitative difference is serving the philosophy of the...

The main ideas of the philosophy of the Renaissance. Mechanical picture of the world. Italian humanism and anthropocentrism in the philosophy of the Renaissance. Disputes of scholastics and dialogues of humanists. The discoveries of Copernicus, the main ideas of Galileo, Newton, Kepler's laws of motion of the planets.

Infinity is one of the fundamental categories of human thought. Difficult way of formation of concept "infinity". Thoughts of the ancients about infinity, the concept of infinity in science, philosophical analysis of this category. The concept of infinity in art.

Plan. Introduction. "Divine Blacksmith" - Part I. The testimony of God about himself and the appearance of Nicholas of Cusa. 2. Pantheistic motives. 3. Doubt the beliefs of Christian cosmology.

INTRODUCTION

Naturphilosophy (lat. natura - "nature") - the philosophy of nature, a speculative interpretation of nature, considered in its entirety. The boundaries between natural philosophy and natural science, its place in philosophy, have changed historically. Natural philosophy played the greatest role in antiquity. Naturphilosophy was the first historical form of philosophy and actually merged with natural science (the atomistic hypothesis in Ancient Greece). In the future, natural philosophy was mainly called physics, i.e. the doctrine of nature.

In the Middle Ages, natural philosophy almost disappears. Separate elements of ancient natural philosophy were adapted to the creationist ideas of Christian, Muslim and Jewish theology. In the Renaissance, a new flowering of natural philosophy begins, which is associated with the names of G. Bruno, N. Cusa, G. Galileo, B. Telesio, J. Companella, G. Cardano, Paracelsus, F. Patrizi. The natural philosophy of this time developed mainly on the basis of pantheism (Greek pan - everything and theos - God - a philosophical doctrine, according to which God and nature are considered as close or identical concepts; God is not outside nature, but dissolves in it) and hylozoism ( Greek hyle - substance, matter and zoe - life) is a philosophical concept that recognizes the animation of all bodies, space, matter, nature). The principle of identity of micro- and macrocosm is especially widely used. The concept of a holistic consideration of nature and a number of other dialectical provisions have been put forward.

In the 17-18 centuries, in the era of the dominance of mechanistic natural science, natural philosophy recedes into the background. In German classical philosophy, natural philosophy is again put forward as the main doctrine. modern sciences natural philosophy is practically not considered.

The features of natural philosophy manifested themselves, firstly, in the separation of the subject of science from the subject of religion (contributed to the development of a natural-scientific worldview), secondly, in the formation of the doctrine of pantheism, which brought God closer to nature, and thirdly, in the development of a theory of knowledge that combined sensory and rational knowledge.

Renaissance called the transitional period from the Middle Ages to the New Age, covering several centuries (Italy XIV - XVI centuries, other European countries XV - XVI centuries), when the Middle Ages in its economic, social, political, spiritual forms had already exhausted itself, and the new bourgeois system has not yet been established.

The philosophy of the Renaissance linked the freedom of a person, the meaning of his life with his own inner activity, creative activity, which acted as the main factor in the self-realization of the individual, individualization - the main emphasis was on the creative activity of the individual, his freedom, individuality.

The greatest role in the philosophy of the Renaissance was played by natural philosophical concepts (Bruno, Cordano, Paracelsus), which testified to the collapse of scholastic methods of understanding nature. The most important results of this naturally scientific direction in philosophy there were: methods of experimental and mathematical research of nature; a deterministic interpretation of reality, as opposed to a theological interpretation; formulation of scientific, free from elements of anthropomorphism (endowing the subjects with whom a person comes into contact in his life, human qualities) laws of nature (Galileo in mechanics). The defining features of the natural-philosophical trend in philosophy were: the metaphysical understanding of the last (indivisible) elements of nature as absolutely qualityless, inanimate; absence historical view on nature and, in connection with this, deistic inconsistency (deism presupposes the existence of God as an impersonal cause of being, not participating in the further development of the world), preserving the isolated position of God in the infinite world.

PERIODS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY OF THE RENAISSANCE AGE AND ITS REPRESENTATIVES.

The philosophy of the Italian Renaissance is not something immutable and frozen, but constantly seeking spiritual education. There are the following periods in the development of her ideas: 1) early renaissance ; 2) heyday, or High Renaissance ; 3) later, or modified Renaissance .

1. The main ideas of the early Italian Renaissance.

The philosophy of the early Italian Renaissance developed in parallel with medieval scholasticism. Arguing with its representatives, the Italian humanists sought to revive the ideas and spirit of ancient culture, while maintaining the basic provisions of the Christian doctrine.

In the work of the inspirer of the humanistic movement in Italy, the great poet, author of the Divine Comedy Dante Alighieri (1265 -1321) for the first time, elements appear that are different from the medieval worldview. Without denying scholastic dogma, Dante tries to rethink the nature of the relationship between God and man in a new way. He believes that the divine and the human exist in unity. God cannot be opposed to the creative possibilities of man. The existence of man is conditioned, on the one hand, by God, on the other hand, by nature.

Dante constantly emphasizes that a person is a product of the realization of the possibilities of his own mind, which are carried out in his practical activities. He argues that all human existence must be subject to human reason.

Founder of the humanist movement, poet and thinker Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374) considered the development of the “art of life” to be the main task. From the point of view of Petrarch, a person has the right to happiness in a real earthly life, and not only in the other world, as religious dogmas assert. Based on the ethical concepts of Stoicism, Petrarch persistently emphasizes the dignity of the human person, the uniqueness inner peace man with his hopes, worries and anxieties.

At the same time, in the work of Petrarch they find a place individualistic trends characteristic of the philosophy of the Renaissance. He believes that the improvement of the individual is possible only if it is isolated from the "ignorant mob". Only in this case, subject to the internal struggle of a person with his own passions and constant confrontation with the outside world, a creative person can achieve complete independence, self-control and peace of mind.

Similar ideas were expressed by the followers of Petrarch: the Italian humanist Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) and etc.

Assessing the philosophy of the early Italian Renaissance as a whole, it should be noted that it is characterized by an attempt to supplement the Christian doctrine antique , "pagan" philosophical ideas. In addition, the Italian humanists of the XIV century. For the first time formulated philosophical principles anthropocentrism bringing man closer not only to nature, but also to the concept of God. For them, not God, but man, comprehensively developed, active, equal in size to God, becomes the center of the world and moral ideal, which often leads to the approval of the principles of extreme individualism .

A feature of the philosophy of this period is that it was skeptical about the possibilities scientific knowledge. Italian humanists of the era early renaissance did not see practical value in natural science knowledge, natural philosophical problems were not included in the range of their interests aimed at solving moral and social problems.

During the period of the formation of the philosophy of the Italian Renaissance, detailed philosophical doctrines did not yet appear, however, conditions were created for their creation.

2. Philosophy of the High Renaissance. Nikolay Kuzansky.

By the middle of the fifteenth century the philosophy of the Italian Renaissance reaches its peak and acquires new peculiar features. She expands the range of ancient sources, uses the heritage of Aristotle, cleared of scholastic interpretation. The philosophy of this period refers to the ideas of Arab philosophy, rich in materialistic traditions and knowledge in the field natural sciences, as well as to medieval heresy and mysticism.

There is a further, although not final, secularization philosophy. Philosophers of this period do not lose optimism in interpreting the possibilities of the human personality, they affirm the principles of anthropocentrism. At the same time, they are trying to comprehend the tragic contradictions that accompany the absolutization of human freedom, which leads to extreme forms of individualism.

One of the most characteristic features of Italian philosophy in the mid-fifteenth century. is organicism . Considering nature by analogy with human life, many thinkers represented it as a single huge organism. A deep interest in nature, the desire to understand it and strengthen power over it led to the emergence natural philosophical ideas. In the field of natural sciences, mathematical knowledge occupied a central place. It was mathematics that was the foundation for the formulation of the series dialectical provisions.

A characteristic feature of the Italian philosophy of the heyday was pantheistic a view of the world, sometimes expressed in a mystical form.

Among the thinkers of this time, a prominent place is occupied by Nicholas of Cusa, Lorenzo Valla, members of the Platonic Academy in Florence, the head of the Alexandrian school, Pietro Pomponazzi, and others.

Philosophical views of Nicholas of Cusa.

The key figure in the philosophical thought of the Renaissance was Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464) , born Nikolai Krebs (he acquired the name that entered the history of philosophy at the place of his birth - the small village of Kuzy, on the banks of the Moselle, in southern Germany). His father was a fisherman and winemaker. The political, scientific and philosophical activity of N. Cusansky is closely connected with Italy, which allows us to consider his philosophical work within the framework of Italian philosophy.

Having been educated at Heidelberg, Padua and Cologne Universities, Cusa became a clergyman and later a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church.

The philosophical and social activities of Nicholas of Cusa, despite his religious rank, actively contributed to the secularization of public consciousness in general and philosophical consciousness in particular. He was close to many ideas of humanism. Being the greatest scientist of his time, he was seriously engaged in mathematics, astronomy, medicine, and geography.

One of the central places in the philosophy of Cusa is occupied by doctrine about God. In accordance with the medieval scholastic tradition, he argues that the divine being plays a decisive role in the formation of the natural world and the human world. However, Kuzanets departs from orthodox scholastic ideas in the interpretation of God and develops ideas close to ancient pantheism, depersonalizes God, who appears in him as “non-other”, “being-possibility”, “possibility itself”, and most often as “absolute maximum”, actual infinity. The world is a "limited maximum", potential infinity.

Kuzansky comes to the idea of ​​the inconsistency of God, which is due to the fact that the absolute maximum, being infinity, does not suffer from any finite operations. Being indivisible, it is also the absolute minimum, and thus represents unity of opposites- absolute maximum and absolute minimum. The coincidence of the maximum and minimum allows us to conclude, firstly, that God is in everything (“everything is in everything”) and the recognition of the world outside of God is inconsistent; that, secondly, God is the unity of cause and effect, i.e. creating and created; and, finally, thirdly, the essence of visible things and God coincides, and this testifies to the unity of the world. Understanding God as a unity of opposites weakens his creative personal functions, brings together the infinite God and the finite world, leads to a departure from the principle of creationism.

idea genesis of the universe Cusa develops in accordance with the Neoplatonic principle emanations. The divine principle, being the unlimited possibility of all that exists and absolute unity, contains all the infinite diversity of the natural and human world in a folded form, the emergence of the world is the result of its deployment from the divine depths. There is an “eternal generation” of the unlimited limited, the single plural, the abstract-simple, the concrete-complex, the individual. The return of the diverse, individual world of nature and man to God is a kind of process of "coagulation".

Thus, without completely breaking with the theistic views of medieval scholasticism, Nicholas of Cusa puts forward the idea mystical pantheism, identifying the creator and the creation, dissolving the creation in the creator. He neglects the idea of ​​a gap between the divine and the natural, the earthly and the heavenly, which is characteristic of scholastic thinking. Arguing that "the existence of God in the world is nothing else than the existence of the world in God", Kuzansky formulates the principles inherent in the cultural and philosophical tradition of the Renaissance, which seeks to understand the spiritual world and the earthly world as a whole.

The pantheistic and dialectical ideas of Nicholas of Cusa found their further expression in cosmology and natural philosophy. Having brought down the infinity of God into nature, Kuzansky puts forward the idea of ​​the infinity of the Universe in space. He argues that the sphere of fixed stars is not a circle that closes the world: “... the machine of the world will, as it were, have a center everywhere and a circle nowhere. For its circumference and center is God, who is everywhere and nowhere.” The Universe is homogeneous, the same laws prevail in different parts of it, any part of the Universe is equivalent, not one of the stellar regions is devoid of inhabitants.

The initial provisions of Cusa's cosmology were the basis for the assertion that the Earth is not the center of the Universe, it has the same nature as other planets and is in constant motion. Such a view contradicted the idea prevailing in the Middle Ages about the finiteness of the universe in space and about the Earth as its center. Kuzansky in a speculative form rethought the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic picture of the world and was a harbinger of the heliocentric view of the universe. He anticipated with his concept the conclusions of Copernicus, who “having moved the Earth, stopped the Sun” and limited the Universe to the sphere of fixed stars.

The cosmological ideas of Kuzansky had a great influence on G. Bruno, who overcame the narrowness of Copernicus's views, relying on the deep dialectical ideas of Cusa.

The natural world, according to Kuzants, is a living organism animated by the world soul. All parts of this world are in common connection and exist in constant dynamics. Nature is contradictory, acts as a unity of opposites. “All things,” writes Kuzansky in “Scientific Ignorance,” “consist of opposites ... revealing their nature from two contrasts by the predominance of one over the other.” He draws examples of the coincidence of opposites, as a rule, from mathematics because he believes that mathematical principles underlie all phenomena. The extension of the principle of the unity of opposites to the real natural world allowed Cusa to occupy a prominent place in the history of the development of dialectics.

Particular attention in the philosophy of Nicholas of Cusa is given to doctrine of man. Kuzansky renounces the Christian idea of ​​creationism in the interpretation of man and returns to the ideas of antiquity, considering man as a kind of microcosm. Trying to connect the microcosm with the divine essence, he introduces the concept "small world" those. the man himself, « big world» , i.e. universe and "Maximum Peace"- divine absolute. According to Cusa, the small world is a likeness of the big one, and the big one is the likeness of the maximum. This statement necessarily leads to the conclusion that the small world, man, not only reproduces the many-sided natural world surrounding him, but is also a likeness of the world of the maximum God.

A superficial analysis gives the impression that by likening man to God, Nicholas of Cusa does not go beyond medieval orthodoxy. However, on closer examination, it becomes clear that he does not so much liken a person to God, but comes to his deification, calling a person "human god" or "Manifested Gods". Man, from the point of view of Cusa, is the dialectical unity of the finite and the infinite, a finitely infinite being. In ontological terms, man stands above all other creations of God, with the exception of angels, as close as possible to God. "Human nature is a polygon inscribed in a circle, and the circle is divine nature," says Kuzanski in his Treatise on Scientific Ignorance.

Deifying man, Kuzansky expresses the idea of ​​his creative essence. If the absolute, God, is creativity, then man, like God, is also an absolute, represents a creative principle, i.e. has complete free will.

The naturalistic tendencies of the philosophy of Nicholas of Cusa, close to anthropocentrism, were strengthened in the later humanistic concepts of the Italian Renaissance of the 15th century.

The teaching of Cusa about man is closely connected with epistemological problems and the question of human cognitive abilities. Cusansky sees the main task of knowledge in the elimination of scholastic faith in authorities. “No one’s authority guides me, even if it encourages me to move,” he writes in the dialogue “The Simple One about the Mind”, and in the dialogue “The Simple One about Wisdom”, Kuzansky compares the scholastic, shackled by faith in authority, with a horse that is naturally free , but is tied by a bridle to a feeder and cannot eat anything other than what was served to him. Kuzansky believes that man, as a microcosm, has a natural ability to understand nature. Its cognitive abilities are realized through crazy likened to the divine, creative mind. The mind is individual, which is due to the different bodily structure of people. There are three faculties, three kinds of mind: feeling (sensations plus imagination), mind and mind.

The selection of sensory cognition as one of the cognitive abilities of a person indicates that Kuzansky does not deny the need for an experimental-empirical study of reality, and this goes beyond the medieval tradition. However, he considers sensory knowledge to be the most limited kind of mind, inherent even in animals. Sensual cognition of a person is subject to the distinguishing and ordering principle of the mind. But neither feelings nor reason are capable of knowing God. They are a tool for understanding nature. Kuzansky does not doubt the possibility of knowing nature, the methodological core of which is mathematics.

Mind is the highest cognitive ability person. "The mind cannot comprehend anything that would not already be in itself in a reduced, limited state." The mind is completely isolated from sensory-rational activity, being a purely speculative, purely spiritual entity, a product of God himself. He is able to think universal, imperishable, permanent, thereby approaching the sphere of the infinite and absolute. The understanding of infinity inherent in the mind leads it to an understanding of the meaning of opposites and their unity. This is the superiority of reason over reason, which "stumbles because it is far from this infinite power and cannot connect the contradictions separated by infinity."

Considering the main cognitive capabilities of a person in their interaction, Kuzansky comes to the conclusion that the process of cognition is the unity of opposite moments - the knowable nature and the unknowable God, the limited abilities of feeling and reason and the higher possibilities of the mind.

The problem of the truth of knowledge solved by Cusa dialectically. At the heart of the doctrine of truth is the position: truth is inseparable from its opposite - delusion, as light is inseparable from shadow, without which it is invisible. A person in cognitive activity is only capable of a more or less accurate idea of ​​the essence of the world, because the divine ways are incomprehensible, they cannot be comprehended accurately and consistently. The inconsistency of "learned" ignorance can only be understood by the mind, which thereby approaches the truth. However, “our mind ... never comprehends the truth so accurately that it cannot comprehend it more and more accurately without end, and relates to truth like a polygon to a circle: being inscribed in a circle, it is the more similar to it, the more angles it has, but even when multiplying its angles to infinity, it is never equal to a circle. As for reason, it is dogmatic, inclined to consider each of its provisions as the ultimate truth. Kuzansky believes that the mind needs to constantly overcome the dogamtic self-confidence of the mind regarding the final truth of judgments, thereby contributing to the understanding of truth as a process of ever greater deepening of knowledge on the way to the unattainable absolute.

The philosophical views of Nicholas of Cusa played a significant role in overcoming scholastic tradition in philosophy, in the development of ideas late Renaissance

3. Natural philosophy of the late renaissance

3.1 Giordano Bruno: the doctrine of nature, pantheistic and dialectical ideas.

Giordano (Filippo) Bruno (1548-1600), was born in the town of Nola near Naples (hence - Nolanets), in the family of an impoverished nobleman. In 1566-1575 he studied at the monastery school of the Dominican Order, where he received the priesthood and a Ph.D. Disillusioned with religious activities, Bruno left the monastery. After some time, persecuted by the church, he was forced to leave Italy. For several years Nolan lived in Switzerland, France, England and Germany, where he taught at universities, speaking out against scholastic philosophy. In 1592, upon his return to Italy, Giordano Bruno was accused of heresy, arrested by the Inquisition and spent more than seven years in her dungeons. Bruno refused to recognize his philosophical ideas as false and to renounce them. He was burned at the stake on February 17, 1600.

The direct philosophical sources of the teachings of Giordano Bruno were the works of N. Cusansky and B. Telesio. In the natural sciences, the astronomical discoveries of N. Copernicus had a great influence on him. Like many thinkers of the late Renaissance, Bruno concentrated his theoretical interests on solving natural philosophical problems, believing that the goal of philosophy is the knowledge of nature. A red thread through the whole philosophy of Bruno runs the idea of dialectical unity divine and natural, material and ideal, bodily and spiritual, cosmic and earthly, rational and sensual.

Problem relationship between nature and God Bruno decides from the standpoint of pantheism, expressed in a more complete form than that of his predecessors. He, firstly, tries to completely overcome the isolation of God from the world, seeks to reveal their unity. God is everywhere and everywhere, not "outside" and "above", but as inherent; secondly, he thinks of nature in the form of some kind of independent beginning, quite often identifying God and nature: "Nature is either God himself, or a divine power hidden in the things themselves." Bruno believes that the actual infinite God “in a folded form and in its entirety” in many specific cases can be identified with a potentially infinite universe that exists “in an expanded form and in its entirety”, which allows us to regard his pantheism as naturalistic ; thirdly, under the influence of the ideas of some ancient thinkers (Parmenides, Empedocles, Democritus, Epicurus, Lucretius), as well as latest discoveries in the field of natural science, Giordano Bruno quite often identified God not only with nature, but also with matter, which makes it possible to judge his pantheism as materialistic .

Based on the convergence of God with nature and matter, Bruno comes to the solution of the problem of substance. He believes that the substance is material, acts as primary matter. In contrast to the Aristotelian-scholastic interpretation, Bruno sees the active principle not in form, but in matter, which is the divine being in things, the principle that produces everything, while maintaining its independence. At the same time, Bruno also believes the existence of a spiritual substratum - world soul inherent in all things without exception. The world soul is conceived by Bruno as the driving principle of concrete things and the whole world, which determines their integrity, harmony and expediency. Thus, according to Bruno, the unconscious creativity of matter (and nature) is based on the activity of the world soul, capable of replacing God.

A superficial analysis of Giordano Bruno's doctrine of substance can lead to the conclusion that it does not go beyond Neoplatonism. However, upon closer examination, it becomes clear that Bruno does not separate the world soul from the material and bodily beginning, he thinks of them as a single whole, believing that there is a single substance in which the corporeal and the spiritual, the material and the formal, the possible and the real coincide. “We,” says Bruno, “discover a double substance - one spiritual, the other corporeal, but in the last analysis, both are reduced to one being and one root.” It is this single substance that is the last, most profound beginning of the universe.

In the area of natural philosophy and cosmology Bruno put forward a number of ideas that are completely at odds with the principles of scholastic philosophy and medieval theology. This was the reason for accusing him of heresy. Bruno argued that nature and the universe are infinite. He argued this position by the fact that the power of God, who is infinity, cannot be limited to the creation of finite things. However, Bruno considers the most powerful argument for proving the infinity of nature and the universe not divine power, but new discoveries in the field of physical and astronomical sciences, and, first of all, the teachings of Cusa and Copernicus. Developing the teachings of Copernicus, J. Bruno proves that any celestial body can be considered as an absolute center, because this center is everywhere and nowhere, and claims that the Universe is infinite as an infinite number of its worlds. In accordance with his doctrine of the unity of material and spiritual substance, Bruno comes to the conclusion that countless worlds have a universal world soul, and not divine omnipotence, as an internal moving source. Nolan supplements this idea with the proposition about the population of countless worlds and their inherent various forms of sensual and intelligent life, different from earthly ones.

Rejecting the dualism of the earthly and heavenly, following the ancient and renaissance traditions and developing the idea of ​​unity, Bruno asserts the physical homogeneity of the earthly and heavenly. According to scholastic philosophy, the Earth is formed by four elements: earth, water, air, fire, and the sky is the element of ether. From Bruno's point of view, ether together with earth, water, air and fire form both the earthly world and all other worlds. The idea of ​​the physical homogeneity of the earthly and the heavenly finds development in the problem units of being. Bruno solves it in the spirit of ancient atomism, supplemented by the doctrine of the absolute maximum. He believes that the basic unit of being is monad, which acts as a minimum of being in three senses: ontological as the smallest substance representing both the corporeal and spirituality; physical like an atom; mathematical as a point that forms a line, a line is a plane, and a plane is anything geometric body. The supreme substance is "monad of monads" or God.

Reflecting on the essence of a single substance and on the problem of the emergence of a plurality of diverse things, Bruno expresses a number of dialectical ideas. Substance is the source of the inner relationship of opposites: the opposites coincide in one, all things are one. In infinity, straight line and circle, center and periphery, form and matter, freedom and necessity, subjective and objective are identified. At the same time, one opposite is necessarily the beginning of another: destruction is the beginning of emergence, emergence is destruction; love is the beginning of hate, hate is the beginning of love; strong poisons can serve as medicine, and medicines can serve as poison, and so on.

The central point of Bruno's dialectical doctrine is the doctrine of the "monad of monads". All opposites coincide in one indivisible point - the "monad of monads", or God. This point is such a whole, which is outside all its parts and outside each part separately. Nevertheless, this whole exists in all individual things of the world, and in each of them separately, and any individual bears the seal of the whole. Being a coincidence of opposites, this whole and nowhere, and everywhere, manifests itself as "all in all."

Unlike N. Cusa, whose dialectics was limited to theological area and developed mainly on the examples of mathematics, J. Bruno saw dialectical principles in all areas of nature and human activity, paying attention not only to their unity, but also to struggle.

Developing epistemological ideas, Bruno continues the traditions of Renaissance philosophy and strongly speaks out against the absolutization of any authorities in knowledge. He argues that it is low to think with someone else's mind, it is stupid to believe according to custom, it is pointless to agree with the opinion of the crowd. The purpose of knowledge, from the point of view of Bruno, is to achieve the unity of certain knowledge. The cognition of unity leads to the cognition of the infinite universe and is impossible without understanding the dialectic of the coincidence of opposites.

Bruno believes that the process of reaching the truth develops gradually, on the basis of the activity of the senses, reason, reason and mind. Role sensual level in the learning process is quite small. Feelings are suitable only to "excite the mind: ... For feelings, no matter how perfect they may be, do not exist without some cloudy admixture." The meaning of infinity is not revealed to sensory cognition. plays an important role in cognition reason. He comprehends sensory information, in the collection of which memory and imagination take part. The ability to penetrate into the highest secrets of nature gives intelligence, or intelligence, which finally corrects the readings of the senses. In some works, Nolanz introduces a fourth step into this hierarchy - mind. It is with the help of the mind that knowledge of the unity of the world, the dialectical coincidence of opposites in it and its infinity is achieved. Thus, J. Bruno considers reason (mind) to be the main source of achieving the truth, not showing due interest in knowledge based on experiment. As for one of the central problems of both the philosophy of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the problem of the relationship between reason and faith, Bruno adheres to the concept duality of truth .

Giordano Bruno avoided the extremes of the anthropocentrism of the High Renaissance. However, in accordance with the revivalist humanistic traditions, he reflects a lot on the essence of human virtues and tries to evaluate them. Bruno believes that a person must turn from a slave of life, striving only for self-preservation, into its active figure. This is facilitated by the understanding of the truth that a person acquires immortality not in a religious sense, but as a particle of the world integrity; life is not limited to its terrestrial forms, but eternally continues in other forms in countless worlds.

The desire of an active person-actor to the knowledge of philosophical truth and work Bruno calls heroic enthusiasm. In his work On Heroic Enthusiasm, he comes to the conclusion that there are two types of enthusiasm: for some it is simply an unreasonable impulse, for others it is a reasonable striving for the one, the true. “As a result, such people speak and act no longer as vessels and tools, but as the main masters and figures.”

Bruno's theory of man is based on his the concept of a single substance. Although the body taken by itself is inferior to the soul taken by itself, the body is necessary for the soul as its realization, and the soul is necessary for the body as its formative principle. "Heroic enthusiasm" is not a purely spiritual feeling and a purely spiritual impulse. He embraces everything corporeal, lighting it with his spiritual fire, and through this corporeality he becomes truly heroic.

The philosophical and natural scientific ideas of Giordano Bruno made a huge contribution to overcoming the scholastic worldview. His consistent pantheism, not limited by either theism or anthropocentrism, went beyond the classical revivalist tradition. Bruno's teaching was a significant step towards a different type of worldview - the worldview of the New Age. The uncompromising life of Giordano Bruno has become a legend, it is an example of the active "heroic enthusiasm" about which he thought so deeply. That enthusiasm, which "... is not afraid of anything and out of love for the divine (true) despises other pleasures and does not think about life at all."

3.2. Mechanistic picture of the world by Galileo Galilei
The founder of the experimental-mathematical method of studying nature was the great Italian scientist Galileo Galilei (1564-1642). Leonardo da Vinci gave only outlines of such a method of studying nature, while Galileo left a detailed presentation of this method and formulated the most important principles of the mechanical world.
Galileo was born into the family of an impoverished nobleman in the city of Pisa (near Florence). Convinced of the sterility of scholastic learning, he delved into mathematical sciences. Later becoming a professor of mathematics at the University of Padua, the scientist launched an active research activity, especially in the field of mechanics and astronomy. For the triumph of the theory of Copernicus and the ideas expressed by Giordano Bruno, and consequently for the progress of the materialistic worldview in general, the astronomical discoveries made by Galileo with the help of the telescope he designed were of great importance. He discovered craters and ridges on the Moon (in his mind - “mountains” and “seas”), saw countless clusters of stars that form the Milky Way, saw satellites, Jupiter, saw spots on the Sun, etc. Thanks to these discoveries, Galileo acquired the all-European fame of the “Columbus of the sky”. The astronomical discoveries of Galileo, primarily the satellites of Jupiter, became a clear proof of the truth of the heliocentric theory of Copernicus, and the phenomena observed on the Moon, which seemed to be a planet quite similar to the Earth, and spots on the Sun confirmed Bruno's idea of ​​the physical homogeneity of the Earth and sky. The discovery of the same stellar composition Milky Way was an indirect proof of the innumerability of worlds in the universe.
These discoveries of Galileo marked the beginning of his fierce polemics with the scholastics and churchmen who defended the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic picture of the world. If until now the Catholic Church, for the reasons stated above, was forced to endure the views of those scientists who recognized the theory of Copernicus as one of the hypotheses, and its ideologists believed that it was impossible to prove this hypothesis, now that this evidence has appeared, the Roman Church makes a decision to prohibit the propaganda of the views of Copernicus, even as a hypothesis, and the book of Copernicus itself is included in the “List of Forbidden Books” (1616). All this put Galileo's activities in jeopardy, but he continued to work on improving the proofs of the truth of the Copernican theory. In this regard, Galileo's work in the field of mechanics also played an enormous role. The scholastic physics that dominated this era, based on superficial observations and speculative calculations, was littered with ideas about the movement of things in accordance with their “nature” and purpose, about the natural heaviness and lightness of bodies, about the “fear of emptiness”, about the perfection of circular motion and others. unscientific conjectures that are intertwined in a tangled knot with religious dogmas and biblical myths. Galileo, through a series of brilliant experiments, gradually unraveled it and created the most important branch of mechanics - dynamics, i.e. the doctrine of the movement of bodies.
Dealing with questions of mechanics, Galileo discovered a number of its fundamental laws: the proportionality of the path traveled by falling bodies to the squares of the time of their fall; equality of the falling velocities of bodies of different weights in an airless medium (contrary to the opinion of Aristotle and the scholastics about the proportionality of the falling speed of bodies to their weight); the preservation of a rectilinear uniform motion imparted to any body until some external influence stops it (which later became known as the law of inertia), etc.
The philosophical significance of the laws of mechanics, discovered by Galileo, and the laws of motion of the planets around the Sun, discovered by Johannes Kepler (1571 - 1630), was enormous. The concept of regularity, natural necessity, was born, one might say, along with the emergence of philosophy. But these initial concepts were not free from significant elements of anthropomorphism and mythology, which served as one of the epistemological grounds for their further interpretation in an idealistic spirit. The discovery of the laws of mechanics by Galileo and the laws of planetary motion by Kepler, who gave a strictly mathematical interpretation of the concept of these laws and freed their understanding from the elements of anthropomorphism, put this understanding on a physical basis. Thus, for the first time in history, the development of human knowledge, the concept of the law of nature acquired a strictly scientific content.
The laws of mechanics were also applied by Galileo to prove the theory of Copernicus, which was incomprehensible to most people who did not know these laws. For example, from the point of view of "common sense" it seems quite natural that when the Earth moves in world space, a strong vortex should arise, sweeping away everything from its surface. This was one of the most "strong" arguments against the theory of Copernicus. Galileo, on the other hand, established that the uniform motion of a body does not in the least affect the processes taking place on its surface. For example, on a moving ship, the fall of bodies occurs in the same way as on a stationary one. Therefore, to detect the uniform and rectilinear motion of the Earth on the Earth itself.
The great scientist formulated all these ideas in the “Dialogue on the two main systems of the world - Ptolemaic and Copernican” (1632), which scientifically proved the truth of Copernicus' theory. This book was the reason for the accusation of Galileo by the Catholic Church. The scientist was brought to trial by the Roman Inquisition; in 1633, his famous trial took place, at which he was forced to formally renounce his "errors". His book was banned, but the church could no longer stop the further triumph of the ideas of Copernicus, Bruno and Galileo. The Italian thinker emerged victorious.
Using the theory of dual truth, Galileo strongly separated science from religion. He argued, for example, that nature should be studied through mathematics and experience, not through the Bible. In the knowledge of nature, a person should be guided only by his own mind. The subject of science is nature and man. The subject of religion is “piety and obedience”, the sphere of human moral deeds. Based on this, Galileo came to the conclusion about the possibility of unlimited knowledge of nature. The thinker here also came into conflict with the prevailing scholastic-dogmatic ideas about the inviolability of the provisions of “divine truth”, recorded in the Bible, in the works of the “fathers of the church”, the scholasticized Aristotle and other “authorities”. Based on the idea of ​​the infinity of the Universe, the great Italian scientist put forward a deep epistemological idea that the knowledge of truth is an endless process. This installation of Galileo, contrary to scholasticism, led him to the approval of a new method of knowing the truth.
Like many other thinkers of the Renaissance, Galileo had a negative attitude towards scholastic, syllogistic logic. Traditional logic, according to him, is suitable for correcting logically imperfect thoughts, indispensable for conveying already discovered truths to others, but it is not capable of leading to the discovery of new truths, and thereby to the invention of new things. Namely, to the discovery of new truths, and should, according to Galileo, lead truly scientific methodology.
In developing such a methodology, Galileo acted as a convinced, passionate propagandist of experience as the path that alone can lead to truth. The desire for an experimental study of nature was characteristic, however, of other advanced thinkers of the Renaissance, but the merit of Galileo lies in the fact that he developed the principles scientific research nature that Leonardo dreamed of. If the vast majority of thinkers of the Renaissance, who emphasized the importance of experience in the knowledge of nature, had in mind experience as a simple observation of its phenomena, passive perception of them, then Galileo, with all his activities as a scientist who discovered a number of fundamental laws of nature, showed the decisive role of experiment, i.e. . a systematically staged experiment, through which the researcher, as it were, asks nature questions that interest him and receives answers to them.
Investigating nature, the scientist, according to Galileo, must use a double method: resolutive (analytical) and composite (synthetic). Under the composite method, Galileo means deduction. But he understands it not as a simple syllogistic, quite acceptable for scholasticism, but as a way of mathematical calculation of facts that interest the scientist. Many thinkers of this era, reviving the ancient traditions of Pythagoreanism, dreamed of such a calculation, but only Galileo put it on a scientific basis. The scientist showed the enormous importance of quantitative analysis, the precise determination of quantitative relations in the study of natural phenomena. Thus, he found a scientific point of contact between the experimental-inductive and abstract-deductive methods of studying nature, which makes it possible to connect abstract scientific thinking with a concrete perception of the phenomena and processes of nature.
However, the scientific methodology developed by Galileo was mainly one-sidedly analytical. This feature of his methodology was in harmony with the flourishing of manufactory production, which began in this era, with the division of the production process, the order of operations, which determines it.
The emergence of this methodology was associated with the specifics of scientific knowledge itself, beginning with the clarification of the simplest form of the movement of matter - with the movement of bodies in space, studied by mechanics. The noted feature developed by Galileo of the methodology determined and distinctive features his philosophical views, which in general can be described as features of mechanistic materialism. Galileo represented matter as a very real, bodily substance with a corpuscular structure. The thinker revived here the views of ancient atomists. But in contrast to them, Galileo closely linked the atomistic interpretation of nature with mathematics and mechanics. The Book of Nature, Galileo said, cannot be understood unless one masters its mathematical language, the signs of which are triangles, circles and other mathematical figures.
Since the mechanistic understanding of nature cannot explain its infinite qualitative diversity, Galileo, relying to a certain extent on Democritus, was the first of the modern philosophers to develop the position on the subjectivity of color, smell, sound, etc. In the work “Assayer” (1623), the thinker points out that the particles of matter have a certain shape, size, they occupy a certain place in space, move or rest, but have neither color, nor taste, nor smell, which, therefore, are not significant for matter. All sensory qualities arise only in the perceiving subject.
Galileo's view of matter as essentially consisting of qualityless particles of matter is fundamentally different from the views of natural philosophers, who attributed to matter, nature not only objective qualities, but also animation. In Galileo's mechanistic view of the world, nature is mortified, and matter ceases, in the words of Marx, to smile at man with its poetic-sensual brilliance. god. He could not do this due to the metaphysical nature of his views on the world, according to which in nature, which basically consists of the same elements, nothing is destroyed and nothing new is born.
Anti-historicism is also inherent in Galileo's understanding of human cognition. Thus, Galileo expressed the idea of ​​the non-experimental origin of universal and necessary mathematical truths. This metaphysical point of view opened up the possibility of appealing to God as the last source of the most reliable truths. This idealistic tendency is even clearer in Galileo's understanding of the origin of the solar system. Although he, following Bruno, proceeded from the infinity of the Universe, he combined this conviction with the idea of ​​the invariance of the circular orbits of the planets and the speeds of their movement. In an effort to explain the structure of the Universe, Galileo argued that God, who once created the world, placed the Sun at the center of the world, and told the planets to move towards the Sun, changing their direct path to a circular path at a certain point. This is where God's work ends. Since then, nature has had its own objective laws, the study of which is only a matter of science.
Thus, in modern times, Galileo was one of the first to formulate a deistic view of nature. This view was then held by most of the leading thinkers of the 17th and 18th centuries. The scientific and philosophical activity of Galileo laid the foundation for a new stage in the development of philosophical thought in Europe - mechanistic and metaphysical materialism of the 17th - 18th centuries.

CONCLUSION

All of the above shows that the philosophical thought of the Italian Renaissance of the XIV - XVI centuries. was in constant development. Its formation went from full or partial recognition of the medieval worldview to its partial or complete denial. Mystical pantheism of the 15th century, limited by theism and anthropocentrism, to the 16th century. takes the form of naturalistic pantheism, often with materialistic overtones. The dialectical method, initially developed on the basis of speculative knowledge, at later stages finds support in empirical knowledge. Raising man to the state of God, and then disillusioned with the radical forms of anthropocentrism, the thinkers of the Italian Renaissance did not lose optimism in assessing the possibilities of man, turning to his active-cognitive essence. The aspirations of this new man were well expressed by T. Campanella:

I'm all in a handful of the brain - and I devour

There are so many books that the world cannot contain them.

I can't satisfy my greedy appetite

I'm dying of hunger all the time...

Eternal desire torments me:

The more I know, the less I know.

The philosophy of the Italian Renaissance is a peculiar, independent stage in the development of Western European philosophical thought. The historical significance of this philosophy lies in the fact that, relying on ancient and Arabic sources, medieval heresies and mysticism, as well as discoveries in the field of natural sciences, it overcame the scholastic dogmatism of medieval philosophy and contributed to the emergence of a rational critical philosophical methodology and the growth of the authority of science.

Dialectical, epistemological, ontological and ethical ideas of Italian Renaissance philosophy had a significant impact on the development of the philosophy of this period in other countries. European countries and were the foundation for the emergence of philosophical thinking in modern times.

REFERENCES:

1. Boguta I. I. translation from Czech, “History of Philosophy. –M.: Thought. 1995

2. Gubin V.D., Sidorin T.Yu., "Philosophy" - 3rd ed., revised. and additional – M.: 2003.

3. Rosenthal M.M., "Philosophical Dictionary" - 3rd ed. - M.: 1972

4. Czechoslovakskaya A.N. - articles, "History of Philosophy" - M .: Thought, 1991

5. Gindikin S.S. Stories about physicists and mathematicians. M., 1981

Naturphilosophy of the Renaissance.

Pantheism and new methodology stimulate the study of nature. Nature again becomes the object of philosophical analysis "The revolutionary act by which the study of nature declared its independence and, as it were, repeated Luther's burning of the papal bull, was the publication of an immortal work in which Copernicus challenged - albeit hesitantly and, so to speak, only on his deathbed - ecclesiastical authority in matters of nature. From here begins its reckoning the liberation of natural science from theology "1. Engels is referring to the well-known work of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) "On the rotation of the celestial spheres", in which the heliocentric model is substantiated solar system. The teachings of Copernicus refuted the centuries-old geocentric (from Theus "- Earth) tradition of Aristotle - Ptolemy, became the starting point for the development of new astronomy and physics. In philosophy, heliocentrism became the starting point for the formation of a new methodology of natural science. If earlier the epistemological attitude reigned, according to which the visible was identified with the real, then in the teachings of Copernicus the opposite principle is realized for the first time - apparently not probability, but is an "inverted" reflection of the essence hidden behind the phenomena.If Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) and Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) mathematically and experimentally proved the correctness of the idea of ​​heliocentrism, this is a merit philosophical reflection on this idea belongs to Giordano Philippo Bruno (1548-1600), who argued that there are innumerable suns, countless lands that revolve around their suns, just as our seven planets revolve around ours.In 1592, hitting the hands of the Inquisition, after torture D. Bruno confirmed: "With I read that in each of these worlds there are seas, rivers, mountains, abysses, fire, animals, trees ... "About one of the books of Giordano Bruno, a frightened scholastic says to the philosopher:" With statements of this kind, you want to turn the world upside down! To which the philosopher replies: "Do you think it would be bad if someone wanted to turn the world upside down?" In the natural philosophy of D. Bruno there are strong elements of materialism and dialectics, he substantiates the principles of filling the Universe with matter, the unity of matter and life, self-movement of matter Giordano, a philosopher and poet, expresses the principle of universality and innocence of movement in this way:

There is peace - everything moves, rotating,

In the sky or under the sky turning around

And every thing is characterized by movement,

Is it close to us or far away,

And whether it is heavy or light.

And everything can be in the same direction

And the same step goes up and down.

Until it finds unity itself.

So the stormy sea ripples,

So going down then up Going up the mountain

But he still remains himself.

As a result of the ascetic activity, the scientific feat of the natural philosophers of the Renaissance, a new view of nature was formed, which differs significantly from the medieval religious worldview (see diagram 9).

Later, similar ideas were expressed by the Italian Campanella (1568-1639) in his famous book"City of the Sun", written in prison dungeons. The city of the Sun is led by a priest, called in their language - "Sun", in ours we would call him metaphysicians. He is assisted by three co-rulers Pon, Sin and Mor, or in our opinion: Power, Wisdom and Love.

Power is in charge of everything related to war and peace. Liberal arts, crafts and all kinds of sciences, as well as appropriate officials and scientists, as well as educational establishments. The number of officials subordinate to the mind corresponds to the number of sciences: there is an Astrologer, also a cosmographer, a Geometer, a Historiographer, a Poet, a Logician, a Rhetor, a Grammarian, a Physician, a Physicist, a Politician, a Moralist. And they have only one book, called - "Wisdom", where all the sciences are surprisingly concise and accessible ... Firstly, childbearing and monitoring that the messages of men and women give the best offspring are subject to Love ... In charge of the same ruler is the upbringing of infants, treatment, the manufacture of medicines, sowing, harvesting and gathering fruits, agriculture, cattle breeding, table and, in general, everything related to food, clothing and sex.

The humanist philosophers of the Renaissance laid the foundation on which a new European worldview and science grew in the 17th-18th centuries.

Read one of the works of Renaissance philosophers and write down your reflections on the issues that are reflected in the text.

Test yourself. Guess the crossword "Renaissance". Write down the terms guessed in the crossword puzzle in your dictionary.

CROSSWORD "RENAISSANCE"

Horizontally:

1. Philosopher of the Renaissance. Another name is Nikolai Krebs.

2. In the City of the Sun, one of the co-rulers is Might, as he is also called in the book.

3. In the utopia of T. Campanella, the co-ruler is Wisdom, as he is also called in the book.

4. The main feature of the philosophy of the Renaissance.

5. In the City of the Sun by T. Campanella, the ruler is the Sun - as he is also called in the book.

6. In the City of the Sun, one of the co-rulers is Love, as he is also called in the book.

7. Philosopher, politician, author of the well-known work "The Sovereign".

8. Italian philosopher, author of the idea of ​​a plurality of worlds in the universe.

9. The famous work of Thomas More.

Vertically:

1. The principle of the structure of the solar system, discovered by N. Copernicus.

2. The famous work of Michel Eikem de Montaigne

3. One of the basic principles of the philosophy of the Renaissance.

4. Author of the utopia "City of the Sun".

5. The era, the essence of which is in the appeal to cultural heritage antiquity.

6. Identification of God and Nature is an ideological principle.

7. Author of the book "Utopia".

8. The process of liberation of spiritual culture from the undivided influence of the church.

9. German doctor, alchemist, who practically substantiated the ideas of pantheism.

10. Figure of the Renaissance, architectural theorist, mathematician, philosopher, teacher.

11. Moral quality. The word is in the title of one of the works of Pico della Mirandola Giovanni.

12. Author of the work "Experiments".

13. Polish philosopher, astronomer, author famous saying: "And yet it (the Earth) rotates!".

No less crushing blow to the scholastic worldview and the church than humanistic thought, the reformation processes and heretical reasoning of Machiavelli, was inflicted by the development of natural science, which in the 16th century. has achieved significant success.

The desire for in-depth and reliable knowledge of nature is reflected in the work Leonardo da Vinci (1452- 1519), Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543), Johannes Kepler (1571- 1630), Galileo Goliea (1564-1642).

Their theoretical developments and experimental studies contributed not only to changing the image of the world, but also ideas about science, about the relationship between theory and practice.

Leonardo da Vinci, a brilliant artist, a great scientist, a talented inventor (among his projects are the ideas of a tank, parachute, airlock), argued that any knowledge is generated by experience and completed in experience. But only theory can give true reliability to the results of experimentation.

“He who is in love with practice without science is like a helmsman entering a ship without a rudder or compass; he is never sure where he is going. Practice must always be built on good theory... Science is the general, and practice is the soldiers.

One of the most significant achievements of natural science of this time was the creation by the Polish astronomer Nicholas Copernicus heliocentric system of the world. The main ideas of Copernicus, which formed the basis of this system, are as follows: the Earth is not a fixed center of the world, but rotates around its axis and at the same time around the Sun, which is in the center of the world.

This discovery made a truly revolutionary revolution, as it refuted the picture of the world that existed for more than a thousand years, based on the geocentric system of Aristotle-Ptolemy. That is why today, when referring to any significant change, the expression "Copernican revolution" is used. When the German philosopher of the XVIII century. I. Kant evaluated the changes he made in the theory of knowledge, and he called them the "Copernican revolution".

Successes in the development of natural science to a large extent determined the nature of philosophical reflections. The leading direction of philosophical thought of the XVI century. becomes natural philosophy, and the central place in the range of problems under consideration is given to the problem of the infinite. The transition from ideas about a closed world to the concept of an infinite Universe meant a radical revision of the entire system of ontological views.

turn to new cosmology emerged already in the 15th century. and was associated with the work of the largest European thinker Nicholas of Cusa(1401-1464). His doctrine of the infinity of the cosmos called into question the theological and scholastic ideas about the universe and was a direct consequence of the solution of the question of the relationship between God and the world.

God in the philosophy of Cusa receives the name of the absolute maximum, or the absolute, which is not something outside the world, but is in unity with it. God, embracing all things, contains the world in himself. Such an interpretation of the relationship between God and the world characterizes the philosophical teaching of Cusa as pantheism(from the Greek pan - everything, theos - god), the most important feature of which is the impersonality of a single divine principle and its maximum proximity to nature.

According to the pantheistic teaching of Cusa, the world, absorbed by God, cannot have an independent existence. The consequence of this dependence of the world on God is its infinity: the world has “a center everywhere and a circumference nowhere. For its circumference and center is God, who is everywhere and nowhere. The world is not infinite, otherwise it would be equal to God, but “it cannot be thought of as finite, since it has no limits between which it would be closed” 2 .

In the cosmology of Cusa, the doctrine of the Earth as the center of the Universe was rejected, and the absence of a fixed center led him to recognize the motion of the Earth. In the treatise "On learned ignorance" he directly says: "...Our Earth is actually moving, although we do not notice it" 1 .

It would be wrong to see in the cosmological constructions of Cusa a direct anticipation of the heliocentrism of Copernicus. Rejecting the central position and immobility of the Earth, he did not give preference to any particular pattern of movement of celestial bodies. But by shaking the traditional ideas about the world, he opened the way to the desacralization of cosmology, that is, to its liberation from religious interpretation.

Naturphilosophy has been developed in creativity Giordano Bruno(1548-1600). The central idea of ​​Bruno's cosmological doctrine is the thesis about the infinity of the Universe. “It cannot be grasped in any way and is therefore incalculable and boundless, and thus infinite and boundless...” 2 . This Universe is not created, it exists forever and cannot disappear. It is immovable, "because it has nothing outside of itself, where it could move, in view of the fact that it is everything" 3 . In the Universe itself there is a continuous change and movement. Referring to the characteristics of this movement, Bruno points to its natural character. He rejects the idea of ​​an external prime mover, i.e. God, and relies on the principle of self-movement of matter.

"Infinite worlds ... all move as a result of the inner principle, which is their own soul ... and as a result, it is in vain to look for their external mover" 4 .

The position of the infinity of the Universe allowed J. Bruno to raise the question of the center of the world in a new way, while denying not only the geocentric, but also the heliocentric system. Neither the Earth nor the Sun can be the center of the Universe, because there are countless worlds. And each world-system has its own center - its star.

Having broken the boundaries of the world and having affirmed the infinity of the Universe, Bruno is faced with the need to develop a new idea of ​​God and his relation to the world. The solution of this problem testifies to the pantheistic position of the thinker. Bruno claims that nature is God in things, he does not oppose the world as its creator, but is in nature itself as an internal active principle.

If in the reasoning of Nicholas of Cusa nature is, as it were, immersed in God, who retains his isolation from the world, then in Bruno God is identified with nature, and he is unthinkable outside the material world. This is the fundamental difference Bruno's naturalistic pantheism from mystical pantheism of Cusa.

Seeing in nature not only a perfect divine creation, but above all a set of laws inherent in it, free from direct interference, the natural philosophy of the era opened the way for the further development of experimental natural science, the emergence of Newton's classical mechanics, and the creation of philosophical concepts of the 17th - 18th centuries.