John Locke, Newton & The Clockwork Universe

John Locke was one of the most influential enlightenment thinkers, and one of the finest empiricists, believing that knowledge is based on experience. He disagreed with Descartes and the idea that we have innate ideas within us from birth. In 1689 he wrote ‘An Essay Concerning Human Understanding’, stating that human understanding comes from our experience, and that we are born with a blank slate and nothing but the capacity to reason. He believed that God gave man the ability to discover knowledge and mortality, and believed in revelation, but not if it was forced by the Church and/or state.

In Book I he argues that the mind is a blank slate, that ideas are from experience and attacks Descartes’ innate ideas, and in Book II he presents an argument for the existence of an intelligent being. In the Epistle to the Reader he states “nothing of them in the mind but a capacity to know them”, and this reflects his beliefs.

Locke was the founder of philosophical liberalism; his thinking reflects the revolution taking place at the time. He argued for the law of nature, granting us each natural rights, to life and liberty.

Locke’s main opponent was Descartes, who wanted to base society on 100% certainty and solid knowledge. He broke everything down; stripping everything he knew and asked what was left. He is famous for the quote “I think therefore I am”, believing that if he wasn’t thinking, he would not exist.

He believed that God gave mankind the ability to discover knowledge and morality, so that innate ideas aren’t needed, and that individuals should be guided by revelation that should be checked by reason. He tried to separate religion from the state.

Newton was also an empiricist, and the start of enlightenment science. He discovered the law of gravity, the three laws of motion, and created infinitesimal calculus. Locke cleared the ground for scientists like Newton, who was criticised by the Cartesian school, who were against things like magic. Newton said that natural philosophy can only demonstrate that a certain force operates in the world, not why. He believed science should not make things up, it should admit ignorance when it did not have data, and that the universe demonstrated God’s freedom and omnipotence.

Locke’s ethic is utilitarian; for the greater good, and he accepted Descartes’ arguments for the existence of God. He had a theory of knowledge, which linked philosophy and politics. He was interested in how we come by human knowledge and what precisely it is, and his philosophy was that we don’t learn from reason, we learn from experience.

His idea of a blank sheet was also known as ‘Tabula Rasa’; that human knowledge is not innate in us at birth, but we use reason to draw conclusions from experience. The primary qualities In his ideas were those that are inseperable from the body; actually in the body. The secondary qualities were things like colours, sounds and smells.

“Reason” was an enquiry as to what things we know with certainty, and an investigation of propositions, which it is wise to accept in practice. Locke believed that our ideas are from sensation and perception, and it is important that men should be guided.

David Hume - causation, induction, inference

Hume represented philosophical idealism, and was an open atheist, who would have been seen as blasphemous at the time, and he would have been executed.

Logical Positivism

This was a school of philosophical thought, and a modern philosophy of science. It was an approach underpinning the approach of medicine, chemistry, physics, etc. and social science. Hume was impressed by Newton, and he tried to apply Eutonian theory to human behaviour.

Hume heavily influences journalists, his ideas that knowledge should be obtained and verified, along with synthesis and analysis.

Einstein was very different to Hume – he didn’t believe in law within the universe.

Hume, similarly to Descartes and Cartesian doubt, along with other Logical Positivists don’t believe in truth or certain knowledge, but believe that everything is a gamble, and nothing is ever certain, for example, the sunrise to Hume, was just an illusion.

Causation

The idea that one cause causes another, however Hume didn’t believe this happened in nature, but only in your mind. In the reading he uses an analogy of billiard balls to describe causation – the idea that you can hit the white ball, and yes another red ball may go into the pocket, but how can you prove it was the white ball that made the red ball go in? It is the idea of not jumping to conclusions, something a journalist can relate to, because you must find the absolute root of the story and research it in so much detail before it can go out.

Induction

Logic is a specific method for analysing claims, and we as journalists can use logic to see if a claim is internally consistent.

There are two types of logic –

-        Analytical logic – something that is always true, and the conclusion is derived from the subject. For example, all bicycles have two wheels, this is logically true, so two wheels means a bicycle, three wheels would be a tricycle and one wheel would be a unicycle. All computers run on analytical logic

-        Synthetic logic – something you can add knowledge to. An ‘axium’ is the starting point in a chain of sythentic logic. For example, “all men are mortal” can be challenged. If you accept the axium, then Socrates is a man (analytical) and therefore Socrates is mortal (synthetic).

Inference

For example, the idea that smoking causes cancer. Scientists have proved that more people that smoke get cancer as opposed to people that do not, but how can we make the direct link that smoking causes cancer? The data is inferring it, not actually proving it. Nothing is known for certain.

Hume believed you cannot derive “ought to be” from “is”, for example “It is cold today ,but it ought to be warm” – it is what it is and people are what they are.

Logical Positivism and Hume assert the independent verification principle, that there is no actual truth, just verifiable and non-verifiable – almost sounds like the idea that anything can be proved if you find the right evidence.

Jonathan Swift - A Modest Proposal

“A modest proposal for preventing the children of poor people in Ireland, from being a burden on their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the publick.”

-        By Dr. Jonathan Swift 1729

I should probably start by saying this is a purely satirical essay, something that I didn’t know before I read it, hence was horrified to read it thinking it was actual ideas of a human! However, now I know, and it was actually quite amusing to read back. It was published anonymously, and it suggests that the Irish living in poverty would ease their economic troubles by selling their children as food to the richer class. It is designed to shock and mock British officials, one way he does this is by describing in great detail the way in which  the children are prepared to eat, “a young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked or boiled;”

The “Advantages” of the proposal

1)     It would greatly lessen the number of Catholics, or “Papists” as Swift refers to them, in the nation, seen as the “most dangerous enemies”

2)     The poor tenants would be able to pay the landlords rent, because of their possession of something valuable – their children.

3)     The money saved on the bringing up of children past two years of age can be put back into the economy, “And the money will circulate among ourselves, the goods being entirely of our own growth and manufacture”.

4)     Along with money going into the economy, the parents will save an awful lot, and also earn money by selling the children.

5)     Taverns, where the cooked children would more than likely be served, will receive good custom because of the well presented and prepared quality of the food, and they can charge as much as they want for it because of the quality.

6)     Apparently it would be a positive thing for a marriage to have to sell a child. Mothers would show more care towards their babies because it would be a profit as opposed to an expense. It would generate “healthy” competition between wives as to who could produce the fattest child to the market, and would cause men to be more fond towards their women as opposed to beating or hitting them as they would before, obviously.

According to Swift’s satire, the flesh of a pig has nothing on “a well grown, fat yearly child”, roasted whole.

It’s safe to say I was extremely relieved to find this was a satirical essay, as the thought of eating anybody human, let alone a year old baby, makes me sick to my stomach. He uses sarcasm and wit to shock his audience, and make the reader side with the Irish and detest the speaker, in this case himself.

He describes “no one objection”, it is apparent that there are no flaws in his ingenius plan to eat babies, describing it as for the “publick good of my country”.

Seminar Paper – Addison and the Spectator & The Royal Exchange

“Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the study of Addison.” Samuel Johnson

Joseph Addison was a very educated man, with a history in government and also an education at Oxford, best known for his essay writing. He was co-founder of the Spectator and of the Guardian between 1711 and 1714, and he also began work on his political paper, The Freeloader, by 1715.

Addison and the Spectator

What I picked up on from the essay was his slight disregard for Aristotle’s methods, “written with Regularity and Method”, going on to describe his own ways, “I have several Thoughts on a Subject without troubling my self to range them in such order, that they may seem to grow out of one another,” This slightly confused me because later he talks about how he likes methodical writing, and likens writing with no method to being in a “Wood” with the “greatest Confusion and Disorder”.

From reading his work, it seems he does think in terms of logic, as broad as his statements may be. He describes long publications as repetitive, whereas short works are more concise, probably in favour of his own style of writing, “do not expect to meet with anything in a bulky Volume”. I agree with this, because if something is concise, it is more to the point and the reader can pick up on what the writer is trying to convey, as opposed to a longer publication, which could be repetitive.

He does speak very logically, and with a lot of sense, explaining that when something makes sense to a reader, “your Eye commands the whole Prospect, and gives you such an idea of it, as is not easily worn out of the Memory.” This is very true and can be linked to all kinds of writing, from blog entries to magazine articles; the reader will always remember something that makes sense and is interesting to them, much like a journalist’s story.

It appears from his writing that generally he likes things to be methodical; “in a regular series”. He sees irregularity as only supportable in “Men of great Learning or Genius”, “often too full to be exact”, “throw down Pearls in Heaps before the Reader, rather than be at the Pains of stringing them”.

“The Advantages of a Reader from a methodical Discourse, are correspondent with those of the Writer. He comprehends every thing easily, takes it in with Pleasure, and retains it long.”

This relates so easily to Journalism, because there is a clear relationship between the writer and reader in any piece of writing. I think it is really interesting to see that at the start of real Journalism, of which Addison was one of the first, this idea was at the root of it and still is today.

He’s also right when he likens arguing men to Cuttlefish, in that when a cuttlefish is “unable to extricate himself, blackens all the Water about him till he becomes invisible”. This is a really interesting analogy, because when arguing, I think it’s likely to lose the focus of the argument, in Addison’s words, “to borrow a Phrase from the Dispensory, a barren superfluity of Words; the Fruit is lost amidst the Exuberance of Leaves”. This can be paralleled almost with the use of interviews and quotes in modern journalism, and probably even back in the 16^th Century, people can be misquoted to ‘blacken the water’.

Again showing his allegiance with the methodic thinker, he seems to favour Will Dry, a friend of his, a man of few words but a “clear methodical Head” as compared to Tom Puzzle, “a free-thinker”.

The Royal Exchange

From the start, as the reader we can gather Addison fancies himself as a “citizen of the world”, talking about the world and all it’s offerings, generally appearing to be very worldly. He refers to products from other countries across the globe, “The food often grows in one country, and the sauce in another”.  From both essays we see that he is very wise, and knowledgeable. However basic his points may be, there is no doubt about his logic.

He does, however, find a way to link almost everything back to Britain, and implying that Britain has a certain ownership over the World, which I suppose was a likely view given the British Empire at the time. “Trade, without enlarging the British territories, has given us some kind of additional Empire.”, “My friend Sir Andrew calls the vineyards of France our gardens, the spice-islands our hot beds; the Persians our silk weavers, and the Chinese our potters”

The repeated use of “our” implies a sense of everything belonging to the British Empire, and he seems very proud of this.

HCJ - Renaissance – From Scientific Revival to Descartes’ Cogito – Seminar Notes

I honestly was a bit lost at how the reading from Russell was going to help us in learning about Journalism, but after the seminar, I felt like there were a lot of links between the two. Looking at the individual philosophers and their ideas, it became clear how it all linked into Journalism really well. Here are a few notes I managed to make during the seminar.

Machiavelli

He was seen as the first political theorist, and in many ways the first journalism. This was mainly due to his brutal honesty within politics. Can it be seen that in a way journalists are armed with sometimes brutally honest information to share with the world?

“Fear is constant, love is fickle” – Fear meaning something like a terrorist story, and love being a celebrity gossip column for example, the ‘fear’ stories seem to be ongoing whereas celebrity gossip comes and goes.

Erasmus

He was seen as the first columnist and critique, partly due to his description of Utopia, which can be linked to More’s Utopia, talked about in Russell. His ideas can be linked back to journalism because without the Renaissance, Journalism would be nothing more than reports of Church, however the Renaissance; that break away from religion, opened doors for Journalists, and other professions alike.

Francis Bacon

Bacon had a method of developing philosophy, and is known for the quote “Knowledge is power”. He believed that in order to avoid distorting the truth, the inquirer must free their mind from any falseness; in other words audiences should question everything they read. The link to Journalism is the need for Cartesian doubt, journalists must question absolutely every fact in order to get things right.

Hobbes

He believed that society must have an elected leader – a sovereign. He believed in the desperatism of the public, and that a leader must rule over a passive audience, the start of mass culture theory. However if it is the public that elect the leader themselves, then surely they have power too.

Descartes

He provided the philosophical framework for political science to develop, and introduced the idea of Cartesian doubt, believing that you should doubt absolutely everything that you know, to make sure that it can be proved as fact. He also travelled a lot for his work, similar to most journalists and remembered for the quote, “I think therefore I am”.

Portagoras

“Man is the measure of all things”.

The Medici family

They are seen to be part of the pursuit for capitalism and industrialisation. If this is the case, and there is the need for constant news in journalism, then is real journalism being sacrificed here, and is there any absolute truth? Is it all being done simply for profit now?

HCJ - Renaissance – From Scientific Revival to Descartes’ Cogito - Lecture Notes

The Renaissance was seen as the return to classic ideas, and was a complex time, which attempted to combine the rest of the world with Christianity. In the Middle Ages Plato and Aristotle were very dominant amongst other philosophers in their thinking. Aristotle believed in Scholasticism, the idea that books and the Bible in particular, guide learning, and Aristotle’s ideas began to merge with those of the Bible. He believed that individual ideas were too much, and that they would become a challenge to Christianity. Thollomy however, a Greek astronomer, believed that Earth was the centre of the universe and that everything else worked around Earth, and another individual was Pythagoras, who put mathematics at the centre of understanding. He believed you could understand the universe by way of numbers, and both of these ideas contradicted Christianity.

Plato was Aristotle’s teacher, and they disagreed a great deal. Plato’s writing was dense and extensive, and his theory of The Cave was especially interesting. He believed that we, as people, live in a cave, with no true vision of reality. The shadows that are cast on the walls are believed to be reality by those who are the cave. One person (a philosopher) is able to escape and to see the outside world for what it really is. This philosopher then tries to go back to educate those still in the cave, but they do not believe him as they still believe the shadows are reality. This symbolises how ignorant society can be, not wanting to learn new and interesting ideas,

The Dark Ages and Middle Ages were a barren desert with no new ideas. It was all about the books and words, and the church and God’s law dominated, it was not questioned and the church stamped out all new ideas. New ideas just didn’t develop, which is why the Renaissance excited people, because it crushed the dogma everybody was feeling from the church. When they discovered new texts and art displaying fantastic ideas, this was when the Renaissance began.

The Age of Discovery, 1492, involved the adventurers and travel tales, those of Columbus and The New World. They included More’s Utopia, which in some ways can be seen as a root of Communism. It was the creation of a global economy and capitalism. The Medici family, a financially powerful and important family in Florence were influential at this point, as they made a fortune in banking and avoiding bans of charging interest on loans. This cemented the idea of the nation state, and states began to create colonies.

The Renaissance was the rebirth of classical thought, the self conscious rejection of tradition and of scholasticism. It argued for a more humanist world view, in particular Protagoras’ view that “man is the measure of all things”. Up until the Renaissance, men were believed to be wicked and in need of salvation, however they were no longer oppressed by original sin. In the South the Renaissance was a direct attack on scholasticism, however in the North, it was more an attempt at compromise, for example More’s Utopia combined Plato’s ideas with Christianity.

Galileo formed a direct attack on Aristotle; he argued that the Bible shouldn’t influence thinking. He proved that the Earth was not the centre of the universe or science, and followed Pythagoras. Machiavelli marked the beginning of political science, and was incredibly influenced by politics. He was a diplomat, and was sent to other cities to defend Florence, because the city states in Italy were constantly fighting. There were also complications with France and Spain threatening to attack. Machiavelli was not of noble birth though, was not well received and was unsuccessful as the rulers of Florence were constantly changing in and out of power, and when the Medici family came back into power, he was no longer needed. “The Prince”, written by Machiavelli and published and printed in 1532, was a guide on how to get and keep power by any means, however it was explicit yet practical. He didn’t get involved with religion or morals, which was remarkable as up until then, the Church were dominant, however Machiavelli didn’t care.

Rules of Machiavelli set out in “The Prince”:

-        In a conflict always support the weaker side because when the conflict is over you will be the dominant power

-        Centralised regimes are difficult to conquer but easy to hold

-        Armed prophets succeed, unarmed ones always fail

-        If you plan to take power through villainy – it is best to do it all at once, and get someone else to do it – Caesar Borgia

-        Importance is that all of this is observed evidence – empirical evidence

Cruelty vs. Clemency

If clemency leads to lawlessness, cruelty becomes inevitable, and how can anybody use cruelty to instil fear but not become hated? This is an interesting point that links to what Machiavelli said, “It is better to be feared than loved, for love is fickle but fear is constant.”, however he doesn’t mention anything about hatred, which can easily stem from fear.

He believed that above all, you should never take someone’s property, “for men forget the death of their father more easily than the loss of their inheritance”.

Rene Descartes was a rationalist, like Spinoza and Hobbes, and believed in systematic and Cartesian doubt, the idea that absolutely everything can be doubted and not believed when you get to the root of the idea. Descartes marked the intellectual transition from the Middle Ages to the modern world, and mirrored Plato and Pythagoras in that he thought the universe could be explained by mathematics, therefore despised Aristotle, believing his system was full of errors. His aim was “to arrive at a knowledge of things from a priori from the knowledge of the order of nature which controls them”. He believed that his formal education was useless and holding him back, and this is now seen as recognition of his ignorance. He thought men of action would have more to teach him than scholars, as he discovered that customs and ideas varied from place to place, believing that “there is as much variety as in the opinions of the philosophers”. He believed he could not rely on anything he had learned from custom or example. He believed in Cartesian philosophy containing three realms: the mind/soul, matter and God. The first two are a created substance, but the third is the uncreated substance; it already exists. Descartes’ conclusion was to dismantle everything he already knew to try to reconstruct his opinions; he questioned everything he knew to be ‘fact’ and doubted everything (Cartesian doubt). He went through everything in his mind piece by piece, and as he was overhauling his ideas he simply goes along with the most moderate ideas of the time.

Cogito ergo sum – “I think therefore I am”

This led to idealism and the ideas of Kant and Hegel. His Cogito came about after he had dismissed everything, and he believed that even if we still doubt, we still exist whether or not there is doubt. He put the individual at the centre of the universe. He believed you could doubt your features; your eyes, your ears, your body, but there’s a distinction between body and mind, and he was sure of his mind, and this is called DUALISM. He had to prove God exists, because God was seen as the perfect being, and Descartes didn’t see how an imperfect being could have a concept of a perfect being, either you designed it yourself or it was given to you. He believed that God had given the idea of God to him. “I exist; I find it in my mind the idea of God, who must exist; God being good will not deceive me and hence my belief in an external world is a true idea." He proved that both himself and God existed, because God created Descartes’ nationality, and Descartes’ did not view God as a deceiver so Descartes could trust his senses. Descartes was the start of modern philosophy; he anticipated the ideas of Newton and leads on to Kant, Berkely and other philosophers who believed that everything came from the ego. He links his belief in God with the Middle Ages and with his focus on the body and mind as machinery; this led to Newton’s clockwork ideas.

First Blog

Hey, my name is Becky and I am from Bournemouth.
I have just started studying Journalism with American Studies at the University of Winchester, with the intention of doing a semester in America this time next year.
I will be using this blog to post my notes on lectures about Media Studies and History and Context of Journalism, along with other interests of mine.