The elements of cultural evolution

It is a commonly accepted view that the history of mankind is a evolving process of different ethnic groups in which each group has been developing its own culture. Therefore there is a fundamental distinction between the culture of the Chinese, the Indians, the Europeans, the Africans and so forth, but also within a specific culture one finds distinct periods or epochs: for example in the Indian history, the period of the Maurya Empire is considered a completely different epoch from the time of the Guptas.
Distinct cultural epochs are also found in the European history, usually divided into the Antique (700 B.C. - 500 A.D.), the Middle Ages (500 - 1300), the Renaissance (1300 - 1600) and the Modern Times (since 1600). These periods are regarded as distinct epochs, because each of them is characterized by certain specific cultural traits, which differ extremely from one epoch to the other.
Among the various cultural traits there are four fundamental elements determining the character and the distinctiveness of a specific cultural period: one is the way how human beings define themselves, the self-understanding of the people and what can be called generally the image of man; another is the way of artistic, creative and joyful expression - the type of art, from music to painting, from design to theatrical e and any artificial construction of reality, another is the way of explanation of natural reality - the kind of science. The fourth element is the way how people organize themselves, how the collective organization of the society looks like. All four elements - image of man, art, science and society can be regarded as constitutive elements of a cultural epoch and can be used also as analytical categories to explore and explain the history of cultures:

• Image of man is an expression to describe the self-understanding of the people and their world-view. It expresses the general attitude towards life and sets the ethical standards of conduct, giving a framework and a guideline for everyday-life behavior. Furthermore the image of man influences decisively artistic expression, defines and legitimates the aims of science and has a crucial bearing on the way human beings organize themselves collectively
• Art is a term representing all areas of human creative expression like music, painting, theatre and all other products of the imaginative inspiration of the talented individuals or groups of a certain period.
• Science is used as a term to denote all explanations about man's natural and social environment, which are commonly regarded as true and thus constitute the commonly accepted knowledge of a certain historical period. An essential role plays the method of how this knowledge is generated - the scientific method that provides the techniques for the creation of scientific knowledge, which in its turn constitutes the source for its practical application through technology.
• Society refers to the collective organization of mankind, focusing on the economical and political structures and institutions of a nation, a state or any other larger form of human grouping. The way a society is organized, how people relate to each other, how the access to goods and services is organized and how the distribution of power is arranged is influenced decisively through the prevailing image of man while the modes of production depend essentially on the type of science and technology available. Yet, the impact of the social dimension on the cultural development at large should not be underestimated, since it seems that the collective dimension of humanity has its own dynamic evolution.

When the essential traits of these elements are dissolving and new and different attitudes, standards, expressions and methods are being developed and introduced, a cultural change is taking place, or a change of paradigm is happening. Abandoning old paradigms and developing new ones is an important feature occurring from time to time in all cultural elements changing profoundly the outlook of the image of man, the structure of society, the concept of science and the manifestations in the arts. Important cultural changes are taking place when the essential traits of all four cultural elements are being gradually questioned, abandoned and substituted through new one leading thus to the separation of one cultural period from another.

The Renaissance as a period of cultural change

During the history of Europe one of the most significant changes in the cultural outlook has been the decline of the Middle Ages and the emergence of the Modern Times - a process which lasted nearly three centuries called Renaissance. During this transition period between two entirely different cultural epochs, the modern image of man originated, the modern natural sciences developed, a new form of artistic expression emerged and a new social order got established.
The Renaissance gives thus a splendid example of a period of cultural change, and an enquiry of how this change happened aims to be a contribution towards the understanding of the essence, the possibilities and the limitations of Modern Occidental culture. Furthermore, the analysis of the origins of the Modern Times should produce as well some valuable insights into the general structure of cultural evolution. The following study concentrates on one of the cultural elements - on science, and wants to trace the lines of changes happening in the scientific method during the three centuries between the Middle Ages to the Modern Times.

A historical Approach to Modern Scientific Method

The product "knowledge" depends always on the method used for acquiring it, and by indicating and defining the way of acquiring knowledge scientific method sets the rules and the framework within knowledge is generated. For doing successful work,the scientist needs to recognize the possible areas of research, to identify what constitutes a legitimate problem and to know what kind of conditions a solution has to fulfill in order to get accepted by the scientific community as knowledge. These standards are needed before any research or creation of scientific knowledge can start and they are laid down in a theory of scientific method.
Since modern scientific method has its origins in an historical process, some ideas of how this history can be told might useful, before one starts to reveal this story. Following the analytical approach to history, history is nothing else than a story in which we get to hear about the past in the form a reconstruction and interpretation of past events. While telling a story historical facts are given a specific meaning to compose a story that makes sense. For example, the historical fact that Mahatma Gandhi went to the sea to make salt, needs a significance attributed to it in order to become a meaningful element in a story. In this case the necessary meaning could be that this event was another step in the struggle that finally led to the withdrawal of the British from India. Without the approving power of facts history easily converts into mere fiction, and without a sense-giving interpretation it becomes a boring and quite futile enumeration of past events.
Therefore the history of the origins of modern scientific method has to be a reconstruction of the past that has to rely on facts, which give the empirical basis of this story. In this case the historical facts are predominantly books and manuscripts, and to a less important degree also drawings and instruments. The written material is quite easily available, since most of the late medieval and Renaissance authors have been printed after the invention of the printing press in the late fifteen century. In order to know what we are looking for while reading and analyzing this quite large amount of material, some information regarding the basic concepts of modern scientific method is required, enabling us to give a meaning to these texts and to tell a story that leads from of the Medieval to the Modern concept of knowledge. Therefore this enquiry starts with an outline of the basic concepts of modern scientific method, then concentrates on a sketch of the Medieval concept of knowledge and shows subsequently the historical process in which the "old" Medieval concepts were abandoned and the "new" Modern concepts of science were developed.

Early modern statements on scientific method

To give a precise idea of the nature and essence of modern scientific method it seems sufficient to focus on the statements on method given by early modern philosophers and scientists, like Galileo Galilei (1564 - 1642), Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626) and René Descartes (1596 -1650) who generally are considered the founders of modern science. Even though it is undeniable that the modern science in the works of Newton and Einstein has gone far beyond those thinkers, it is nevertheless true that the basic conceptions of those early modern thinkers remain valid until today. Analyzing the methodological texts of these early modern thinkers there emerge four foundation-pillars of modern scientific method:

• The human mind is the conscious creator of all knowledge. This, maybe the most "philosophical" consideration, means that all knowledge is generated through the intellectual abilities of the human being. Furthermore, this means that the first step in the process of gaining knowledge is necessarily a reflection on the human mind - on its nature, its capacities and its mode of functioning. Therefore, before we start to gain knowledge of something, we have to learn about our mental abilities, which are in charge of generating it. The French philosopher René Descartes, who coined the famous formula "cogito ergo sum" (I think therefore I am) has emphasized strongly the need of exploration of the human mind, acknowledging that the only reliable, not doubtable position in the whole universe could be only the human self-consciousness, which is the basis and starting point of all our ideas and all our wisdom about the world. The image of the world as a product of the human mind had an enormous impact on the European culture, - it was taken up and developed further later by the idealistic thinkers like Kant and Schopenhauer and it reveals also some resemblance with the Indian Philosophy.
• The cause-effect relation is the universal pattern of all scientific explanations. Regardless whether causal relation is considered an ontological assumption - cause and effect are considered the factual modes of an existing objective reality -, or whether this relation is regarded as an epistemological one - causality is only the subjective mental pattern with which we perceive and explain reality - , in both ways necessary causal relations are considered the only recognized way of any scientific explanation. The pattern of cause-effect relation perceives of reality as a virtually infinite net of interrelated elements influencing each other. It is the aim of modern scientific research to discover and establish stable and necessary cause-effect relations, which are then called "laws of nature".
• Mathematics is the instrument for the quantification of causal relations. The important role of mathematics is twofold: Firstly, it is the universal pattern for the construction and structure of a scientific theory. The sciences of space and quantity - geometry and algebra - are called "pure sciences", because they are not necessarily involved in the physical or natural reality, but are exclusively products of the human mind. This independence from the physical world renders the mathematical demonstrations the most certain ones, because all mathematical conclusions derive from universal definitions and general axioms established through a process of logical reflection that takes place within the human mind. To get sure knowledge about the extra-mental reality - what is called the physical, chemical or biological aspects of the reality - the sciences of physics, chemistry and biology build their theories following the mathematical method: first they construct the basic elements and fundamental axioms and arrive then by deduction at reliable demonstrations and precise proofs in the detail of the natural world. Secondly, mathematics are applied as an instrument for the quantification of causal relations. As already stated, modern science aims to establish necessary causal relation among natural phenomena. Mathematics is applied to measure these relations, which are thus transformed into equations like a=V/T (acceleration equals velocity through time). This quantification of causal relations renders knowledge exact, precise and accurate, but at the same time excludes from the field of science all qualitative phenomena which are not calculable such as ethical values and emotions. Galilei 's distinction between primary and secondary qualities of an object - measurable one and not measurable ones - originating in his conviction that the universe is written in mathematical language, is the origin of the concept of quantified science.
• The experiment is the method of empirical control. The experiment is a specified and controlled form ob observation for the purpose to see how a theoretical assumption behaves when put into action. This means in the context of causal relation to check whether a given cause does or does not produce a predicted effect. In this method of "trial and error" a mental theory is brought together with the empirical reality to sort out ideas which "work". As long as a theory does not function practically it has no scientific value; for getting accepted as knowledge by the scientific community a theory must be useful for practical applications. The "usefulness" is an crucial condition for modern science relegating all assumptions and conjectures that cannot be tested into the world of idealistic speculations. "Human knowledge and human power do really meet in one" said Francis Bacon paraphrasing that science is considered an instrument and a weapon in the human struggle against nature.
  Besides these four essential concepts of modern scientific method, there is another idea inherent in the spirit of modern scientific method: the notion of "progress", which sees knowledge as a dynamic undertaking continuously expanding the areas of knowledge through the work of scientific research and thus constantly reducing the unknown areas of reality. This belief finds its origin in the modern image of man, which sees the human being as an individual actor engaged relentlessly in a struggle against the adverse forces of nature.

Logic and Science in the Middle Ages

Unlike the modern concept of science, the medieval view of knowledge is not based on reason and experience, but centered on the authority of two ancient scriptures - the Christian Bible and the writings of the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. Even though it took some time to bring the pagan Aristotle in close relationship with the holy scripture, the medieval theologian and philosopher Thomas Aquinas amalgamated the scientific works of Aristotle with the religious revelations of the Bible in such a way that the ancient Greek scholar was regarded as the supreme philosopher who had been able to see the real nature and true essence of the world: Aristotle became thus the "voice of God's creation" and the main authority in all fields of knowledge and the scientific work in the Middle Ages consisted exclusively studying and commenting his books. Throughout Europe the monks and friars of the various holy orders have been carrying on the Christian-Aristotelian tradition called "Aristotelian Scholasticism".
For giving a short overall view of the Aristotelian theory of knowledge we concentrate our interest on those writings which deal with logic, natural philosophy and metaphysics. Generally the Aristotelian way of gaining knowledge is based on visual-perception and common sense: Aristotle explains the world in terms of daily life experience, as in the area of nature where he conceives of four fundamental elements - fire, air, water and earth which in many different kind of mixtures are regarded responsible for the many folded aspects of the natural world. This method of projecting the way human beings experience nature into nature itself by rendering the subjective perceptions like of hot, dry, wet and cold constitutive elements of the natural world, is called "naïve realism", highlighting that there is no conscious discrimination between the human mode of perception (logic) and the principles of nature (ontology). Nevertheless, the skill of logic is a necessary instrument for the intellect and Aristotle describes the procedure of the scientific demonstration as the fundamental mental tool to create knowledge: A general assumption, like "all human beings are mortal" and a specific statement like, "Socrates is a human being" are used as premises for the conclusion "Socrates is mortal". If the two premises are true, the truth of the conclusion follows necessarily and is thus demonstrated scientifically. Socrates' individual mortality is deduced through the fact that he belongs to "human beings", which are generally mortal. In this way the term "Human being", which is present in both premise and called therefore "middle term", serves as a cause for Socrates' mortality. "We know something when we know its cause" Aristotle says, defining four different types of causes - material, formal, final and effective - which can serve as "middle terms" for scientific demonstrations. In the example of Socrates, his mortality is proved by the fact that he is materially and formally part of human beings. Aristotle sees mortality as a quality of the substance "humanness" in the same way as in the grammatical structure of language an adjective is connected with a noun. In nature, qualities do exist only together with their underlying substance, which causes them, and consequently any observable fact is caused through its substance or through its "substantial form" as the medieval scholars called it. Knowing something meant in the Aristotelian tradition having identified its true substantial form.
This concept of causal knowledge is embodied in the metaphysical framework of Aristotle's assumption about the structure and essence of the universe, which he conceives of as a hierarchy of entities or substances, starting with most universal, all-embracing matter "being". This substance is subsequently differentiated into "corporal" and "non-corporal being", and further on into "vital" and "non vital corporal being" down o the "rational" and "non rational vital corporal being". This hierarchy of substances embraces all possible forms of existence and determines their particular place in the cosmos according to their specific quality which distinguishes one from the other: Since rationality is the specific characteristic that distinguishes a human being from the other "vital corporal beings", i.e. the animals, the true substantial form of a human being is the "rational animal".
The medieval natural philosophy is based on Aristotle's concept of "natural motion" as the fundamental force in the material world, which is characterized by a constant change of its form through growing and decaying. All kinds of change taking place in nature, be it the growth of a plant, the flight of a bird or the shot of an arrow are explained according to the general principle "everything that is moved must be moved by something". The mover or the moving agent is either an inherent principle in the objects itself - the vital energy of the plant causing its growth or the muscles of the bird moving the wings - or as in the case of the arrow , an external mover.
Inherent motion occurs in the form of creation and destruction, generating and dissolving the animated and unanimated objects, which are nothing else than the previously mentioned substances of the hierarchical universe. Changes affecting the substances themselves are possible and different from changes of their qualities: Substantial alterations involve the substance of an object itself, - like when a tree dries out and dies, it looses it substantial form of a tree and becomes a piece of wood. Qualitative changes substitute only a quality through another, - like when a tree looses its leaves, it becomes leafless, but it is still a tree.
Local motion - the movement of a body from one place to another - can be caused by the inherent principle of the object to move towards its "natural place" - like a flame flaring up towards the sky or a stone falling towards the soil. In the case of the arrow set in flight, the motion is triggered off by an external mover impressing its force first on the bowstring and then on the arrow.
Contrary to the modern view, where mathematics play such an important role in the sciences of nature, Aristotelian natural philosophy considers the disciplines of space and quantity as totally apart from the physical natural reality. The mathematical objects of spatial and quantitative relations are immaterial, derived through a process of pure mental abstraction, disregarding all qualities of natural objects except their extension and quantity. This view regards mathematics as a pure mental discipline, totally detached from any involvement with the material world, rendering geometry and algebra the most precise and most certain sciences, clean of any defect and uncertainty of the physical world. Since the subject-matter of natural philosophy was the study of the alteration of the qualities of natural objects, mathematics as the discipline of immaterial quantitative proportions was an entirely different discipline and there was no possibility of how mathematics could be useful for the study of nature. Aristotle stated that "we should not claim mathematical precision in the material world" expressing that natural qualities and mathematical quantities belonged to two completely different areas.
In medieval natural philosophy, nature is seen as the field of constant qualitative changes occurring in natural substances, and the task of the natural philosopher was to determine the true essence - the substantial form - of an object through the discovery of its causes. This basic outline shows that the medieval concept of "science" differs enormously from the previously given description of the principles of modern scientific method: firstly and obviously, medieval natural philosophy is lacking totally the element of controlled empirical observation, which plays such a central role in the modern view. Truth is being searched for in books, predominantly Aristotle and his countless commentators rather than in the exploration of nature. The rarely mentioned observations are mostly quotes taken from another manuscript and have never been carried out by the author himself, and if they are done, they are so done so superficially that no decisive result would ever emerge. The entirely different attitude towards mathematics highlights another gap between medieval and modern concept of knowledge. The modern view of mathematics as a model for the construction of scientific theories and as an instrument for the discovery of the qualitative relations in nature is incompatible with the Aristotelian concept of substances and qualities. Even the concept of causal knowledge has in its medieval version a different significance, because again it is embedded in the cosmos of changing substances and qualities and not in the modern universe of infinite relations. In fact, the fundamental distinction between medieval and modern science can be illustrated with the antagonism of the terms substance and function, which express two entirely different modes of perception: Where the substantial approach experiences a closed world - a cosmos - filled with things and bodies, the modern functional point of view perceives an infinite universe structured through relations among elements.
Generally, the medieval scholars were not particularly conscious of the fact that all the books and the whole literal tradition were a product of the human mind, but they believed that the "right", i.e. Aristotelian scientific explanations, would describe the reality "as it really is". The main concern of the medieval natural philosopher consisted in finding the most accurate interpretation of the eternal truth given by the great philosopher.
Having illustrated so far the incompatible principles of the medieval and modern concept of knowledge, the question arises of how the medieval concept of knowledge of nature could have ever lead to modern science. A short survey on the intellectual movements during the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance will illustrate the process in which the Aristotelian philosophy slowly was partly abandoned and partly reformed, and how the reformed ideas melted with the ideas of the humanists and with the techniques of the craftsmen, thus initiating a new paradigm of science.

Philosophical movements and scientific discussions during Renaissance

Already during the late Middle Ages, a lengthy and animated discussion on the Aristotelian conception of science had initiated among the scholars, in the beginning only undermining the authority of the ancient philosopher, but ultimately demonstrating the central assumptions of the Aristotelian epistemology as fallacious. These developments within the "scientific community" of that time were accompanied by the contributions towards a new world-view and a image of man developed by the newly emerging social group of educated layman. This movement has been called "humanism", coined after the humanists, which were originally rhetoric teachers at the universities, but included soon also aristocrats, wealthy merchants, lawyers and poets. The humanists were interested predominately in the human and social affairs and developed a new world view and a new image of humanity by defining the human being as an individual, independent and conscious creator of his own fate. At the same time, the scientifically interested craftsmen and artists, engaged in solving the practical problems of building and designing, were developing techniques of empirical observation and practical application of knowledge. These early modern engineers defined knowledge in terms of control over nature anticipating the modern concept of engineering. Generally, modern scientific method originated in a integration of the reflections, discoveries and achievements of these three social groups.

The discussion on scientific method among the Aristotelians scholars

It is interesting to note that the decline of medieval natural science initiated within the medieval "scientific community" of theologians and philosophers and was not an outcome of an "external" criticism put forward by the humanists or engineers. The Aristotelian scholars, launching a critical reflection on the fundamental assumptions of the Aristotelian conception of science, ultimately arrived at the conclusion, that the criterion for true knowledge of nature, as established by the ancient Greek philosopher himself, could not be fulfilled satisfactorily within the categories of the Aristotelian approach to nature.
Firstly, the movement of "nominalism", originated by the English William of Ockham (1284-1349), showed that Aristotle's "science " of nature is based on the uncritical assumption that language and reality are one: In fact, Aristotle takes for granted, that the language/words used in the description of nature correspond exactly to the essence of the natural phenomena themselves. The assumption of a guaranteed adequacy between language and empirical objects is a keystone in the ancient philosopher, who thought that the human mind generates mental concepts through a process of abstraction and generalization, which "extracts" from many specific, empirical phenomena its essence. Since science aims to make universal and general statements, knowledge uses "universal" terms, which represent and stand for the many folded empirical variety. For example, having seen many different, individual trees we arrive at the universal term "tree", which we use then to denote all possible kind of trees. These "universal" terms were considered as "real" as the individual, empirical "particulars" they stand for, and therefore all scientific knowledge generates a true picture of nature as it "really" is, as long as the logic of causal demonstration was followed.
In contrast with the "realists" who followed the ancient philosopher in this viewpoint, the "nominalists" - in Latin "nomen" means "word" - doubted whether there could be any guarantee for an essential correspondence between language and empirical reality. They argued quite successfully that the terms of the language could be nothing more than mental concepts generated by the human mind meant to signify something located outside the human mind in the empirical world: the only real existing objects were the empirical particulars. In this way the movement of the nominalists declared the medieval criterion for true knowledge - the "adequatio rei et intellectus" (the adequacy of things and the mind) - as impossible to fulfill and that the ideal of a realistic science - describing nature as it "really" is had to be abandoned.
The second critical movement within the Aristotelian scholasticism was the so called "voluntarism" of the Scottish John Duns Scotus (1266-1308), who taught that God as the supreme being and the creator of the universe must have the power to interfere at any moment in his creation and change it whenever he likes to do so. This line of reasoning originated in the religious conviction that all human knowledge resulted infinitely narrow and imperfect when compared to God's infinite and eternal wisdom and providence. The "potentia absoluta" - the omnipotence of God - created a lot of difficulties among the natural philosophers, because they explained natural reality through cause - effect relations which made nature necessarily functioning the way Aristotle had stated in his books. In fact, as established by the ancient philosopher, the key criterion for true knowledge stated that only those scientific demonstrations, which demonstrated a necessary and indispensable connection between a cause and its effect were entitled to be called knowledge. The "voluntarists" - the term derives from the Latin word "voluntas", signifying willpower - argued that it was impossible to imagine that God had to follow unavoidably and necessarily his once established rules, because it was unimaginable that the supreme being should be the slave of his own creation. This way of thinking proved that all intellectual and rational efforts to understand nature were inevitably bound to be an uncertain and very doubtful affair.
Thus these two intellectual movements initiated the decline of the medieval natural philosophy demonstrating that the Aristotelian criterion for true knowledge - necessity and universality - could not be fulfilled. The late medieval criticism did not result in an immediate abandoning of the ancient philosopher, but it opened the doors to an intense discussion on the abilities of the human mind and on the methods of acquiring knowledge. One important result of these debates consisted in the distinction between theology and philosophy, the former conceived of as the exclusive realm of eternal truth given through God's revelation, the latter as the field of doubtful human knowledge produced by the human mind. This division was expressed in the idea of the "double or twofold truth" - one divine, eternal and universal, the other human, finite and particular. Non-dogmatic, human knowledge was possible in two areas: the reflection on the intellectual and rational abilities of the mind and the observation of the empirical world of nature.
Regarding nature, the interest focused on Aristotle's idea of "natural motion", which was one of the fundamental concepts in the medieval natural philosophy. In the universities of Paris and Oxford emerged the theory of the "impetus" as an answer to the constant confusion deriving from the Aristotelian qualitative concept of "natural motion", which embraced such different phenomena as gravity, local motion and organic growth. The theory of the "impetus" distinguished precisely between acceleration, persistent motion and organic growth and was based on the new concept of motion as a force impregnating its power on an object. The power imprinted on an object was considered the cause of the motion of the object, which was thought to move on eternally if not hindered by other forces, like the resistance of the air. The degree of the "impetus" was thought to be proportional to the quantity of matter of the object and its velocity. Thus the phenomena of local motion ceased to be considered as a attribute of a substance and became the first natural quality to be treated quantitatively as an autonomous and calculable natural phenomena. The theory of the "impetus" has been an important step towards Galeilei's concept of "momento" and is considered a precursor of Newton's principle of inertia.
The growing interest in the study of nature rendered the question of how empirical knowledge could be achieved more important than ever. The debate started by the nominalists developed into a philosophy of language exploring the relationship between mind, language and empirical objects. During the fifteenth and sixteen century the Italian university of Padova emerged as the leading center of natural philosophy, where the professors up to the times of Galilei, who taught there mathematics in the nineties of the sixteenth century, were engaged in wide-ranging discussion on scientific method. The ever-growing interest in the observation of natural phenomena had brought a fast progress in the disciplines of medicine and biology, where a logical instrument was needed to serve as a tool for empirical discoveries. The problem of empirical knowledge stemmed from the commonly accepted view, that in nature any observable natural phenomena was to be considered an "effect", which had been generated through a unknown "cause", which was somewhere concealed in the depth of nature. The dilemma of empirical knowledge - knowledge is knowing the cause, in nature we perceive primarily effects - set the need for a logical method for the discovery of causes. In fact, the natural philosopher had the task to discover the hidden cause of a given phenomena, and once found it, to use it in a "scientific demonstration" to prove "scientifically" the appearance of the effect. The logical procedure had to start with the observable phenomenon, from which was inferred its cause; once the cause was found, the effect could be demonstrated through the cause, fulfilling thus the criterion of causal knowledge. This method of analyzing and synthesizing called "regress" - meaning going forward and backward - opened the possibility for new empirical knowledge and was taken up later by Galilei, who called it the 'method of resolution and composition' or 'analysis and synthesis'. The phenomena of smoke and fire might serve as an example for this causal relationship: it is obvious that fire is the cause of smoke and not the other way round, but if we want to prove 'scientifically' the appearance of smoke, we have to begin with the observable phenomena "smoke" and deduce its cause through a "scientific demonstration" that hypothetically takes "smoke" as the cause of "fire": Whenever there is smoke, there is also fire. Here is smoke; therefore here is fire. Having thus proved the cause, we can take it for another syllogism, saying: Wherever there is fire, there is also smoke. Here is fire; therefore here is smoke. While the first syllogism serves only as a tool to infer a cause, the second proves the appearance of fire through its cause, and fulfills thus the criterion of necessary causal knowledge. While in the Aristotelian logic of causality "smoke" is considered an attribute of the substance "fire" that appears necessarily whenever the substance is present, in the logical method of the "regress" cause and effect are two distinct natural elements, which are connected through a functional correlation that makes it possible to infer one through the other. In this way, the Aristotelian cosmos of a qualities inherent in substances has been substituted by the functional concept of equivalent cause-effect relationships. The concept of causality has become a functional one, considering cause and effect as interrelated phenomena of independent elements. The difference between the paradigm of substance and the paradigm of function expresses itself in a entirely different view of reality: Aristotle sees the world as a compound of a limited variety of qualitative entities, for Galilei nature consists in a virtually infinite web of functional correlations between natural elements.
Without doubt, the method of the "regress" as a inductive logical tool to generate and to legitimate empirical knowledge shows already a certain affinity with the modern concept of scientific method. As a next step towards the modern methodology, the four Aristotelian types of possible causes - material, effective, final and formal - were gradually restricted to a single one: the "ultimate and proximate cause". In the study of nature, separating the necessary and indispensable causes from the accidental and unessential ones, means to "try out" one after the other in order to find the one which is exclusively and necessarily responsible for the appearance of an given effect. Once the cause is found the cause, the effect can be demonstrated theoretically as well as constructed practically, introducing a certain amount of actual, empirical experimentation.
In this way the inductive logic of the "regress" solved not only the problem raised through the absolute potency of the volontaristic God, which had deprived the natural world of any necessary eternal order, but provided at the same time also an answer to the criticism of the nominalism, which had destroyed the belief in a guaranteed equivalence between linguistic terms and empirical objects. In fact, the empirical knowledge generated through the "regress" is undeniably a creative product of the human mind which analyzes and syntheses the natural phenomena, and the terms of the language used in the scientific demonstrations were not regarded as constitutive elements of reality, but merely as linguistic or "mental concepts" used for the description. The knowledge thus generated on one side could not claim anymore to have definite and exclusive authority and had become hypothetical, probable and controversial, but on the other it had been released from all Aristotelian and theological prejudices.
While the hypothetical and uncertain character of knowledge led to a considerable increase in the creation of "!science", its uncertainty often was felt as unsatisfactory and disappointing, and a discussion evolved concerning the degree of certainty in the various fields of knowledge. This debate which produced numerous treatises "On the certainty of the mathematical demonstrations" involved not only Aristotelian scholars, but also humanists and artists, such as Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) and Leon Battista Alberti, and was centered around the question why mathematics are considered commonly as the most certain of all sciences. Aristotle as well as Plato had considered mathematics the most certain science, but they differed in their motivation: For Aristotle the mathematical objects were only idealized products of mental abstraction, entirely cleaned from any material impurity. Against this view stood the Platonic tradition with the antique mathematicians Euclid and Proklos considering the geometrical figures not only as the most stupendous concepts of the human mind, but at the same time also as elementary actual elements of nature. According to this view mathematics occupied an intermediate position between the immaterial area of the spirit and the material world of nature. Quantity, extension and proportion are evident visible facts in the material world, but at the same time the mathematical objects exist also within the human mind as pure concepts and pure ideas. This twofold characteristic bestowed mathematics with a unique status among all fields of human knowledge, because it is the only one where divine and human knowledge are identical. Since the times of the Antique arithmetic and geometry had been applied in astronomy, optics and music, but concerning nature Aristotle's verdict was followed that mathematics and nature belonged to completely different spheres and thus were incompatible. The Aristotelian scholars, trying to defend the epistemological difference between natural philosophy and mathematics, recurred to arguments that in the end ironically led to conclusions quite opposite of their intentions. Firstly, they emphasized that never a mathematical cause would be able to demonstrate any material effect in nature, because mathematics was neglecting explicitly all material qualities. Secondly, they argued that the premises of the mathematical demonstrations were tautologies, like in the definition of the triangle as a figure bounded by three straight lines, the figure bounded by three straight lines is not only the cause of the triangle, but also identical with it, while in nature cause and effect were always two entirely distinct phenomena. Both objections are true, but only an obstacle to the application of mathematics in nature as long as the Aristotelian ontological conception of natural substances and qualities was followed. Already the twofold method of induction and deduction used in the "regress" showed a certain similarity with mathematical demonstrations, insofar as the terms of its premises are reciprocal and interchangeable like the ones in mathematics. Causality is already conceived of as a mutual relationship between two interchangeable phenomena, which are connected through a functional interdependence, similar like the mathematical definitions. Concerning the fundamental difference between an abstract and immaterial (=mathematical) cause and an empirical and material (=natural) cause, it is clear that the Aristotelian paradigm restricts the status and role of mathematics to the study of only the quantitative aspects of an natural object/substance. These aspects were primarily extension or weight, but these two qualities of an object were regarded actually as the least important aspects of a an subject/substance and never they were able to demonstrate anything essential of that object. In fact, following this line of Aristotelian thought, even the quantitative aspects of an object, like its size or weight, could not be demonstrated through quantitative causes, but exclusively through the peculiar form of its particular substance.
But the idea emerged that certain natural qualities could be measured and expressed in a similar way as the amount of a quantity. This shift of scientific interest facilitating the use of mathematics in nature produced numerous treatises entitled "De intentio e remission formarum" (On the growth and the decrease of qualities), which discussed the possibilities to express the change, - the increase or decrease - of a natural quality, i.e. heat or light, in terms of a quantitative relationship between the intensity of these phenomena and the conditions in which they occur, i.e. . This method to connect the intensity of a natural qualities to the changes in the circumstances in which they occur, rendered the relationship between effect and cause measurable and expressible in terms of an algebraic equation. The cause for the appearance of a natural phenomenon had lost its nebulous character of an essential substance and had become a measurable quality. Even if no systematic measurements have been made before the 17.th century, the concept of measurable functional relationships between natural phenomena had been developed. It implied the important distinction between measurable and not measurable natural qualities, - a notion leading directly to Galilei's discrimination among "primary" and "secondary" qualities, the former conceived of as objective, i.e. "real" entities of the physical world, the latter regarded as mere subjective, "imaginary", sensations of the human perception.
The Renaissance discussion on scientific method had been started among the medieval scholars, originally aiming to defend the Aristotelian conception of knowledge, but in the end it led towards the set-up of a new scientific paradigm. As a first result, a logical tool emerged enabling knowledge of the empirical world in a "scientific" way: the method of analyzing and synthesizing of the "regress" makes empirical scientific research possible, exploring the depth of nature in search of the hidden causes of the natural phenomena. In this way the human mind becomes the conscious creator of knowledge, which turns out to be an artificial interpretation and not as an realistic description of reality. The debate on the certainty and the role of mathematics revealed mathematics not only as the most certain of all sciences, but also as the ideal paradigm for all kinds of human knowledge due to its intermediate position between nature and spirit. Being part of the uncertain, material and unstable nature but at the same time also part of the certain, immaterial and stable spirit, mathematics became the ideal model for model for the construction of scientific theories, but also as the perfect tool for the exploration of nature. The reduction of the many folded qualities of the natural phenomena to their quantitative, measurable aspects was the next step towards the modern scientific paradigm of empirical, quantitative science of nature.
But even if these methodological achievements point clearly in the direction of modern science, they would not have been able produce an entirely new scientific paradigm unless they were completed and blended with the ideas of the intellectual movement of the humanists and the practical approach of the engineers.

The humanists

Renaissance-humanism originated among those teachers at the universities, who taught the four so-called "liberal arts" of grammar, rhetoric, jurisprudence and poetry, but embraced soon as well aristocrats and wealthy merchants. The main focus of interest of the humanist was the human being and the practical problems of daily life and they regarded the Aristotelian scholasticism as a useless game of endless discussions on irrelevant topics. According to their sometimes vehement criticisms, the Aristotelian scholars failed completely in the task of providing answers to the practical problems of life - like defining an aim of life and showing a way to reach it. Originating in the cultural atmosphere of the Italian city-states of Florence and Venice in the 14th century the movement of humanism spread out all over Europe and flourished particularly in the economically developed regions like Northern Italy and The Netherlands. It can be seen as the expression of the changing social structure of the Renaissance, which is characterized through the decline of the ecclesiastical authorities and the emergence of independent cities based on crafts and trade. Humanism certainly played an important role in preparing the ground for the Protestant Reformation, started by Martin Luther in 1529, but all its radical and utopian ideas were prosecuted by the Inquisition and suffocated by the repression of the arising absolutistic states in the 17th century.
In the context of the present paper our interest is confined to an outline of the humanistic ideas concerning world view in general and image of man in particular. Both topics were central themes in the humanists' writings trying to give an answer to the growing social disorder and general insecurity which resulted from the declining moral conduct and the fragmentation of the political order. The Medieval ethics were based on one hand on Aristotle's theory of virtues and on the other on the Christian principle of the immortality of the soul as formulated by Augustine and Thomas of Aquinas. This doctrine stated that a individual might reach the eternal life in heaven through leading a good and virtuous life on earth, while bad and wicked earthly conduct would lead into everlasting damnation in hell. While the original Aristotelian philosophy regarded the virtues - namely prudence, courage, modesty, generosity - as means to reach the final aim of a good and happy life on earth, the Christian ideology added the three spiritual virtues of faith, hope and charity and taught that virtuous conduct was not subordinated to any higher goal, but presented the goal in itself. (+heaven) In the medieval context of the vertically structured class-society of clergy, aristocrats, guilds and peasantry living righteously meant that the individual accepted and fulfilled the expectations and roles of the particular social group within it was born. The social order was regarded as the manifestation of the eternal natural law given by God. As soon as the scholastic explanations of the true and eternal order of the world was questioned and gradually, first in Northern Italy and The Netherlands, but later throughout Europe, the stiff social structure started to disintegrate, the newly emerging laical city elites of aristocrats and merchants felt the need to express their self-understanding and their attitude towards life in a new ethic and a new philosophy. Thus the central task in the writings of the humanists from Petrarca (1304-1374) to Erasmus (1466-1536) was the search for moral principles that could provide a sound basis for a righteous and respectable conduct of life that was free from any religious dogma. The main philosophical authority of the humanists was Plato, who together with his ancient Greek commentator Plotin, sustained a world view in which the human being plays a central and intermediate role between the material sphere of nature and the immaterial world of the divine. According to this view the human body belonged to the physical world of matter while the soul takes part in the spiritual realm of the divine. This intermediate position between God and nature on the one side liberated the individual from the chains of any pre-established dogmatic order but on the other forced it to take its' fate in his own hands a to the decide which direction his life and behavior would take: whether to degenerate into an animal-like being following its lower impulses or whether to evolve towards a God-like being pursuing its' higher divine impulses. The humanists regarded the human being as an individual and independent being which was essentially free from any social and moral obligations, but at the same time as fully responsible for his actions, because it is within its' personal will and effort to find a way of achieving the goal of a good and happy life. The humanists combined this Platonic image of man with the Aristotelian philosophy of virtues and developed thus their functional theory of rational human behavior: The human being is conceived of as a free individual equipped with certain virtues, which - if used in the right way, i.e. rational way - will lead inevitably towards a righteous and happy life. The goal is still called the "good and happy life", but not anymore conceived as the Aristotelian self-sufficiency of a small community, but as material well-being and happiness of the individual. Analyzing human nature and history the humanists discovered that human life is characterized primarily through a continuous struggle for individual survival and personal satisfaction of needs and desires. This insight led to the conclusion that the essential aim of human life consisted in pursuing whatever is useful and convenient for the personal and private well-being of the individual. The well-being and happiness of the collective dimension of man - the society - is considered to be an outcome and a measure of the happiness of its members and therefore there is no need for the individual to surrender any of its egoistic desires to a distinct and superior collective goal.
The result of this approach is a highly individualistic, utilitarian and egoistic image of man, while the collective dimension of man - the society - is characterized through the struggle of its members for individual happiness. Since the humanists didn't make out any higher, collective goal independent, the only legitimated purpose of the collective organization - the state - is to provide military and legal security to facilitate the smooth running of trade and enterprise, as clearly stated by Machiavelli (1467-1527), one of the founders of modern western political theory.
Concerning the individual sphere, the humanists elaborated guidelines and techniques for reaching the goal of an individually successful and happy life. Even though God's providence and omnipotence had to be acknowledged - either out of faith in the religious dogma or out of fear of the clerical power - , these divine powers were no real impediment for the freedom of the individual to decide its fate. Man's general fate might be in the hands of God, but a good portion of his destiny - which the humanists called fortune - was nevertheless definitely in his hands. In fact his conduct and behavior are within his responsibility and everyday he is forced to take decisions, to choose, and to act, constantly trying to master the course of his life and consequently getting control over ever larger sections of his environment, be it nature or his fellowmen.
Individual freedom to decide and to choose goes hand in hand with individual responsibility, rendering the individual the main responsible for personal success or failure. As the best method to overcome all difficulties and problems of life and reaching thus the aim of a materially successful and ethically honest life, the humanists propagated the usual practice of virtuous conduct. This might seem a quite traditional advice, but their definition of "virtuous conduct" as the "right way to use of rationality" in all circumstances of life was quite revolutionary, since it leaves aside entirely any traditional moral connotations. This entirely new approach to morality opened the way for many unscrupulous statesmen, like Cesare Borgia in Italy, who interpreted this ethics in the sense of "the aim sanctifies all means". This utilitarian approach to human behavior connects means (rationality) and aims (success) in a clear and functional manner: Man becomes thus the conscious and responsible creator of his rationally planned and accomplished actions while pursuing personal wealth and well-being.
It is no coincidence that this humanistic image of man is integral part of the modern scientific method, in which the conscious creator is an essential condition for the possibility to obtain knowledge. Also the idea of scientific progress originates in this concept of man in as far as the conviction that man is constantly engaged in trying to manipulate his environment through his rationally planned and executed actions had been transferred to the area of natural science, where it started the belief that natural science was continuously engaged in enlarging of the areas of knowledge and diminishing ignorance.
This short survey of the basic traits of the modern image of man is far from being exhaustive, but it might be sufficient to highlight the essence of the modern European world view and the way of acting, where a highly individualistic human being is pursuing rationally personal wealth and well-being. The degree of success in the struggle of life can be seen as a function of the material wealth an individual has been able to accumulate. It is marginal whether this world view is been framed within a religious framework of the Christian tradition, where it can become even more powerful, as for example in Calvinism, where worldly success is regarded as the unmistakable proof of being among the class of God's "chosen ones".
During Renaissance, facilitated by the invention of the printing press which rendered the circulation of new ideas much more easy, large sectors of the population and especially the non-clerical intelligentsia, artists and merchants followed this individualistic and utilitarian image of man and inaugurated a new social order. Starting in Italy the humanistic world-view and image of man permeated quickly all European countries and emerged as the prevailing and widely accepted mentality changing the social structure and collective organization from the Medieval feudal caste system into the modern type of competition society, where the positions in the hierarchies of power, wealth and status are gained according to individual ability and effort. The freedom of Modern European societies consist primarily in the total - at least virtually - social mobility of all its members regardless their origins, rendering constant competition the essential feature of modern societies.

The artists and engineers

The third social group contributing to the emergence of modern science differed from the scholars and humanists in its social status and working-area. Unlike their intellectual counterparts, the Renaissance artists and engineers originated in the class of craftsmen and manual workers and were not engaged in any theoretical discussions, but were employed by the feudal landlords and the ecclesiastical authorities in the construction and decoration of buildings, like palaces, forts and churches as well as in the production of tools and weapons. They were lacking almost entirely any academic education and their way of tackling the many folded technical and practical problems while constructing, designing and inventing was neither the philosophical tradition of the scholars nor the rhetorical approach of the humanists, but rather the empirical and pragmatic method of experience. The technical methods and devices used in their work of construction, decoration and invention were basically only oral transmitted experiences of their forefathers and colleagues, which had to be combined with personal observation and practical ability. This method of observation and experience was led by the aim to control the forces of nature in order to use them in the execution of projects. Artists and craftsmen were convinced that they could construct and invent only those things which nature permitted to do, and they believed that the limits for technical innovations had to be searched equally in the depth of nature and in man's intellectual capacities. For them "knowing something" meant "being able to create it" and this link between theory and practice has become an essential trait of all modern sciences: A theory has to be practically applicable if it wants to be called "scientific". Accordingly, Francis Bacon considered observation and experience as the foundation pillars of true scientific method and declared that only those notions can be called knowledge which can be re-produced practically. Unlike the Aristotelian scholars the Renaissance architects, painters and sculptors used mathematics regularly in their work and considered it an excellent tool. In the treatise "Della pittura" (On painting) Leon Battista Alberti (1407-1472) described the geometrical construction of space and extension according to mathematical principles. Also Leonardo da Vinci, who often is regarded as the prototype of the modern engineers, used mathematics extensively for his inventions and his paintings but he did not succeed - like all his colleagues before Galilei - in incorporating mathematics into a general theory of knowledge. His manuscripts are an enormous accumulation of drawings and instructions, showing inventions and describing experiments, but they are lacking entirely a coherent theoretical approach.
By the time of Galileo the Renaissance artists and craftsmen had succeeded already in inventing several new instruments, like clocks, pumps, telescopes and compasses. Even though these fascinating machines were man-made artifacts, nevertheless they were at the same time also part of nature because it had been possible to construct them only through following and applying the forces and the principles of nature itself. The correlation between knowing the principles of nature and the capacity to create machines favored the conclusion that all and everything in nature would function necessarily like a machine, leading to many reductive, mechanistic interpretation of nature, like René Descartes' description of the human body as a vital automaton in his book "De homine" (On the human being). However, the essential idea behind the empirical approach of the artists and craftsmen was their operational definition of knowledge: Knowing something is considered equivalent with the necessary instructions for a successful creation of an appliance, - to "know-how-to-do-it". Consequently, the common practice of observation is extended into more and more sophisticated techniques of experimental control aiming to check the behavior of a theoretical assumption in the context of the empirical reality.

The origins of modern scientific method and the structure of cultural change

The prominent place in the history of science and philosophy of Galileo Galilei, René Descartes and Francis Bacon is due to the fact that these early modern scientists succeeded in combining the diverse approaches of the academic scholars, the humanistic laymen and the pragmatic craftsmen in a single concept giving birth to a new paradigm of scientific method. They combined the practical approach of the engineers - knowledge is equivalent to practical "know-how"- with the logic of functional causality developed by the late-medieval Aristotelians - knowing an effect means to be able to demonstrate it through its cause - and integrated it with the concept of mathematical quantification. This new empirical, operational and quantitative scientific method is totally different from the medieval concept of knowledge and it opened the way for the enormous proliferation of technical inventions, which are among the main characteristics and the basis of the success of Western culture.
The 'change of paradigm' from the medieval towards the modern concept of knowledge initiated with the scholastic 'scientific community' where the movements of nominalism and voluntarism proved that Aristotle's fundamental requirement for knowledge - the terms of our mode of perception could reveal the necessary causal structure of reality - was unachievable. In fact, there could be no guarantee that the terms of our mode of perception were also constitutive elements of nature itself, and there could be no reliable necessity in a world that was subject to a divine omni-potency. This self-destruction of the Aristotelian authority led to a progressive decline in the faith of the possibility of eternal knowledge as revealed through the Bible and Aristotle, and created thus an increasing interest in the examination of man's intellectual capacities on the one side and produced many diverse approaches in the exploration of nature on the other. The discussions on the possible methods of achieving true and necessary knowledge revealed the necessity for a conscious source of knowledge, which did not rely on any traditional authority, but on the human intellectual abilities alone. The focus on the 'nature and image of man' is a distinctive trait of the Renaissance, which reflects both in the scholastic discussion on methodology and in the humanistic search for a rational attitude towards life. The humanists developed the modern image of man as an independent rational being that is applying its rational abilities in the pursuit of its own goals. On the other side, the increasing concentration on the empirical reality generated a ever growing series of discoveries that revealed the traditional medieval 'natural philosophy' as an entirely doubtful and incorrect affair, which was generally totally inappropriate for any practical and technical applications. This situation set the need for a new approach towards knowledge that could offer again a certain, commonly accepted and practically applicable vision of reality. Mathematics, being generated through the human mind and at the same time also a constitutive trait of the empirical reality emerged as a the model science for all scientific theories; predominately for those scientific explanations which were about the natural world. The mathematical paradigm combined with the results of the efforts to reform the Aristotelian logic into an instrument for empirical research established the concept of functional and quantitative causality as the universal mode of scientific explanation. The humanistic emphasis on the prominence of the mathematical structure of the world was combined with the late-scholastic idea to express the intensity of a quality in quantitative terms and led thus to the application of mathematics as an instrument for the quantification of functional causal relations. Finally, the pragmatic and technical approach of the craftsmen and artist evolves into the experiment as the method of empirical control over theoretical assumptions.
This new scientific method needed quite a long time to establish itself as the commonly accepted main-stream way of thinking and there passed almost three centuries from its origins in the late 13th century until its definite institutionalization, which was achieved through the foundation of the 'Royal Society' in England in 1662 and the of the 'Academies des Sciences' in France in 1666. Of course a major obstacle for the establishment of the new paradigm was definitely the Catholic Church, not only due to the fact that the majority of philosophically educated population were among monks or friars who were generally very reluctant to any new ideas, but also because any doubt on the traditional teachings was considered an attack on the legitimacy of the secular power of the papacy. On the other side the feudal sovereigns generally encouraged the new scientific views expecting to gain something through them, either hoping to find a philosophical basis for the legitimacy of their authority and or at least to increase their celebrity, wealth and power through technical - civil or military - innovations. But the historical and social context did not only influence the course of advancement of modern scientific method, it affected as well the choice of possible areas of scientific interest. The reason why the new way of acquiring knowledge concentrated almost exclusively on nature and left aside almost entirely all social issues can be attributed at least to a great extent to the fact that both clerical and secular authorities were much more interested in preserving the traditional beliefs about the sacred order of their empires than interested in defending the Aristotelian notions about nature. For a change in the explanation of the natural world did not threaten their lofty place in the hierarchy of power and domination while any new idea about the right shape of the collective organization of mankind was considered rightly as a potential menace for their privileges. Yet there are a few examples of early modern 'sociologists' who studied the human and social affairs by using the same method of analysis and synthesis as the natural scientists of their time, like the Italian Niccolò Machiavelli (1467-1527) who produced an excellent empirical analysis of the dynamics of political domination, or the English Thomas Moore (1478-1535) who developed an ideal - utopian - society by synthesizing society out of its constitutive elements. These thinkers abandon the medieval belief in a divine 'history of salvation', where the human life on earth is conceived of only as a preparation for the eternal life in heaven or hell, and elaborate the modern concept of human history as a creation of free individuals who shape the history of mankind through their conscious actions. But in all social and historical areas of research the emerging new scientific approach too often clashed with the interests of the ruling elites who obstructed any cool analysis of social, political and economic reality, as i.e. illustrated in the statutes of the Royal Society, which guarantee freedom of research as long as the scientific interest is confined to 'natural things and useful arts' and leave all philosophical, theological and ethical problems aside. The exclusion of the human and social dimension of life from scientific research was the price the early modern scientific community had to pay in order to develop undisturbed the natural sciences. Thus modern natural sciences developed into a powerful instrument for achieving aims which were more and more shaped by the humanistic ideal of a materially successful life.
Having thus traced some peculiarities concerning the historical aspects of the origins of modern scientific method in the historical context of the Renaissance, it might be interesting now to raise some controversial philosophical aspects and of its essence and to point out some peculiarities of its genesis.
One of the most surprising aspects of the modern concept of knowledge is certainly the sharp distinction between knowledge concerning nature, like physics and chemistry and knowledge pertaining to the realm of the human affairs, like history and psychology - a distinction that did not exist in European culture before the dawn of the Modern Times. In fact, in the modern view, the natural sciences are considered to reveal the unchanging, precise and true essence of the natural world, while the social sciences are regarded to give only a probable, contingent and approximate description of the human affairs. Certainly the question arises why such a distinction has come about and it might be worth investigating into the epistemological reasons for this separation. Since the subject-matter of knowledge is being constituted through the method used producing it, any 'a priori', essential or ontological difference between the natural and the human world - or ultimately between matter and spirit - does not seem to be viable from a logical point of view.
But it can be argued that the paradigm of quantification, which makes such a sharp cut between measurable and not measurable phenomena, leads inevitably to the exclusion of all those notions from the area of exact sciences that cannot be quantified. In fact, modern scientific method necessarily either excludes all those phenomena from the area of science or necessitates to quantify them even at the cost of distorting them. There is no doubt that the quantification of causal relations has brought a high degree of precision into scientific explanations, but it seems that the price to be paid for this exactness consists in a far-reaching reduction of the possible areas of scientific research. In this context a revealing illustration is the change of meaning of the expression 'natural law', which until the end of the 16th century pertained exclusively to the social affairs where its signified the God-given eternal order of the feudal and clerical hierarchy, while from Galilei onwards the same term has been used solely to express necessary functional relations in the world of nature.
A similar problem can be found in the requirement of empirical control - the experiment - which obliges a theory to be able to be tested, or to be tried out in order to qualify for the label 'scientific'. The validity of an affirmation depends on its empirical verification, or at least on the possibility of its empirical falsification, but this condition again restricts the areas and themes, which are considered to be 'scientifically' accessible. Obviously all insights in the disciplines of history, sociology and psychology are either too vague in their articulation or too remote from any practical utility do not fulfill the criterion for 'real' knowledge and are therefore regarded as unscientific and thus excluded from the field of science.
Even the role of the human mind as the independent creator of knowledge is controversial, because the human mind does not exist independent from its physical and environmental basis. The Modern image of man conceiving him as a separate and independent entity, cut off from nature, does not reflect the human being as a product of the terrestrial evolution and as a genuine part of nature. The neglected link between mind and body, between spirit and nature is certainly one of the most problematic aspects of modern science and urgent research has to be done to explore this relationship and to reconcile the two fundamental parts of human existence. Concerning the individual level modern man needs to find a harmonious equilibrium between his intellectual capacities and his physical necessities as a first step towards personal growth, while on the collective dimension mankind is faced with the need to find a responsible way to relate to its natural environment.

selected bibliography:

• Alistar C. Crombie: Augustine to Galilei, London, 1952
• Alexandre Koyre: From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe, Baltimore, 1958
• Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: Chicago, 1970
• Paul Oskar Kristeller, Ernst Cassirer, John Herman Randall: The Renaissance Philosphy of Man, Chicago, 1948
• Alfred von Martin: The Sociology of the Renaissance, London, 1945
• John Herman Randall: The School of Padua and the Emergence of Modern Science,
• Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, New York 1958
• Edgar Zilsel: The Genesis of the Concept of Physical Laws, in: The Philosophical Rewiev, 1942

During the lecture translated texts of the following authors were made available to the students:
Leon Battista Alberti, Aristotle, Averroes, Francis Bacon, Nikolaus Copernicus, René Descartes, Marsilio Ficino, Galileo Galilei, Johann Kepler, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, William Ockham, Nicolò Oresme, Francesco Petrarca, John Dun Scotus, Giacomo Zabarella.