What is the role of experience and “authorities”?
How are we able to know what we know?
Galileo warned his readers to be skeptical of authority. He recognized that people in power, or in positions of higher knowledge, did not always know what they were talking about even though they thought they did. He wrote about the need to use one's experience to explore reality without "drinking the Kool-Aid" given by authorities. As to knowledge, Galileo believed that we know things through our experience of them - through our five senses. If ten people are in a room, each of those ten people have different sensory experiences, and thus different truths. Galileo theorized that, for example, if each of those ten people could agree on the color of the walls in that room, then that fact becomes a part of history, and a belief system, but necessarily reflective of truth. Historical knowledge is a collective sense of a truth. However, whether or not this is an intrinsic truth was a question Galileo recognized as important to question.
Personal experience and the teachings of authorities are two valuable sources of knowledge, particularly in the vein of scientific research. It is when these two come into conflict, Galileo argues, that the authoritative source may warrant questioning. For him, this questioning took the form of experimentation--Aristotle would disagree, although Galileo's examples of cooking eggs and melting lead balls are not of natural origin to begin with and thus cannot be simply observed. Anyway, Galileo found he could not replicate these human experiences under any conceivable circumstances, and in fact found the opposite effect (cooling instead of heating), and therefore cast extreme and justifiable doubt upon them.
Last edited by Lilly Kerper on Thu Apr 03, 2014 9:52 pm; edited 1 time in total
Joined: 01 Apr 2014 Posts: 8 Location: United States
Posted: Thu Apr 03, 2014 9:52 pm Post subject:
Authorities may expect others to take for granted what they have discovered without question, and accept their research as principle. Galileo thought firsthand experience was much more substantial evidence than siting a reputable name. As Cote mentioned, Galileo said that experience is truth. He believes one can be much more sure of their own experience than the word of others. Sarsi had an easier time buying into trusted philosophers ideas and expanding upon them, while Galileo considered these ideas possibilities to keep in mind while doing his own research.
I really liked what Ruby said about our acceptance of authority today. Most scientists that I know of are using already developed ideas to base their work off of, not starting from scratch or thinking of Newton's laws as potential truths. People are so attached to these ideas that when something like string theory which would put everything we know about modern physics at stake, lots of physicists start spending their time trying to disprove it. Now we want science to match what we already know.
I'll make sure to keep it short... I also hope it's okay if I don't address everything and bring up new points... Whatever, I'll try it out.
In the past few days, I couldn't help but think of Carl Jung's Psychological Types, which attempts to define everyone's personal psychological function along four fundamental spectrums. One of these spectrums analyzes how we perceive and synthesize information, or "how we know what we know". On one side is sensing perception; physical, concrete, detailed. On the other side is intuitive perception; intangible, abstract, big picture. Sensory perception derives from experience while intuitive perception derives from introspection, outward versus inward. Of course, as Emma beautifully pointed out, "instinct and trusting our senses builds up our own personal knowledge of the world". Everyone utilizes and is capable of both sensory and intuitive perception in order to understand reality, but Jung argues that people tend to prefer one to the other.
Everyone we've studied so far wants to determine the truth, and their preferred method of perceiving affects the way they approach the truth. The way I see it, Galileo and Aristotle are strong sensory learners; to them, sensation begets experience, which begets memory, which begets insight, which begets knowledge, which begets truth. On the other hand, Sarsi and Plato, lean more intuitive. To those three, pure abstract reasoning is all it takes to discover truth.
Quote:
I wonder if Galileo had proven something through experimentation if he would expect others to readily accept it as fact or if he would want them to experience it on their own?
Ruby, I think that this question gets at a very interesting point regarding the nature of experimentation, namely, that any effective experiment must be replicable. I feel that Galileo would advocate for the curious to replicate his experiments in order to see the truth for themselves... but if they don't have the ability, materials or patience to do so, then they can just trust that he did the exact same thing.
Posting for Will because of technical difficulties:
Galileo believes that experience is the primary foundation for knowledge, and the most trustworthy. Experience was also the source of authority to Galileo, and he believed that knowledge founded from experience is better than any secondary source, no matter what authority the source originated from. This is why Galileo used his own observations in his experiments instead of observations made by other scientists. I think this idea of experience over other sources applies to everyone. Who isn't more prone to trusting their gut than taking someone's word? Coming from personal experience (heh), the best way to understand a concept is to figure it out for yourself, as opposed to having a teacher attempt to explain it. I think Galileo probably felt the same about this concept of self-taught knowledge.
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