The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza

Popkin, Richard H.

doi:10.1525/9780520342453

Cited by 773 publications

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“…For Montaigne, most familiarly, the logical response to extreme doubt was "to accept Christianity on faith alone." 64 In order to believe, in other words, one need not know anything in particular; one can doubt and believe at the same time. This position, described in the skeptical tradition as "fideism," held that faith is the only response to a world in which all is in doubt.…”

Section: ⅵ ⅵ ⅵmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Faith of Unbelief: Rochester's “Satyre,” Deism, and Religious Freethinking in Seventeenth-Century England

Ellenzweig¹

2005

J. Br. Stud.

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Section: ⅵ ⅵ ⅵmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Faith of Unbelief: Rochester's “Satyre,” Deism, and Religious Freethinking in Seventeenth-Century England

Ellenzweig¹

2005

J. Br. Stud.

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“…Paracelsian, Hermetic, and Neoplatonic theories of nature blended with Renaissance astrological and alchemical traditions; all seemed to inveigh against the various subspecies of academic Aristotelianism, even as these jousted among themselves. In addition to the cacophony of academic doctrines and tangle of diverging methods, the very possibility of certain knowledge was thrown into doubt by the claims of a revived classical skepticism (Popkin 1979;Dear 1988). Finally, the decrees of the Council of Trent (1545-1563) had effectively ratified the great doctrinal schism separating Protestant from Catholic and elevated questions of orthodoxy to the highest level, thereby driving the intellectual turmoil of the age even deeper into the minds of men.…”

Section: Apostolic Spirituality and The Jesuit Image Of Knowledgementioning

confidence: 99%

Transposing the Merton Thesis: Apostolic Spirituality and the Establishment of the Jesuit Scientific Tradition

Harris

1989

Science in Context

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The ArgumentDespite more than fifty years of debate on the Merton thesis, there have been few attempts to substantiate Merton's argument through empirically based comparative studies. This study of the Jesuit scientific tradition is intended to serve as a test of some of Merton's central claims.Jesuit science is remarkable for its scope and longevity, and is distinguished by its markedly empirical and utilitarian orientation. In this paper I examine the ideological structure of the Society of Jesus and find at its core an “apostolic spirituality” that explains the legitimation of these forms of science within the Society. The values of apostolic spirituality (diligence, practicality, learning, etc.) strongly encouraged an activist mentality among Jesuits, which in turn led to the formation of apostolates in education, at court, and in the overseas missions. The values associated with apostolic spirituality led to the initial acceptance of active-empirical sciences within the Society, which became established as traditions because they were useful in fulfilling the goals of the Society's apostolates.This study, by providing a qualified confirmation of Merton's central claims, suggests the importance of a supra-confessional sanctification of labor and learning in the growth of active-empirical sciences.

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“…Richard Simon was a biblical scholar at the Oratory in Paris, whose reconstructive work on the Old and New Testaments is an exemplary achievement of the criticalhistorical method in this field (Hazard 1963;Popkin 1974). Although he was a professional theologian, however, Simon paid less attention to the message of the Bible than to its medium; he did not so much deal with its timeless religious and moral ideas as with the actual social conditions and literary patterns in which these ideas had been processed and authorized in history.…”

Section: "The Public Grounds Of Truth": the Catholic Vindication Of Tmentioning

confidence: 99%

Science, Tradition, and the Science of Tradition

Mali

1989

Science in Context

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The ArgumentScience consists in progress by innovation. Scientists, however, are committed to all kinds of traditions that persist or recur in society regardless of intellectual and institutional changes. Merton's thesis about the origins of the scientific revolution in seventeenth-century England offers a sociohistorical confirmation of this revisionist view: the emergence of a highly rational scientific method out of the religious-ethical sentiments of the English Puritans implies that scientific knowledge does indeed grow out of – and not really against – customary modes of thought.In tracing the intellectual origins of this view back to the religious controversy between Protestants and Catholics, the essay demonstrates that the essential conflict between them with regard to natural science stemmed from their antagonistic conceptions of tradition and its function in the production of genuine knowledge – of religious as well as of natural affairs. Whereas the Protestants believed only in those truths that are immediately revealed by God to each man through his reason, the Catholics adhered to truths that are related to men or “made” by them through culture and history.

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The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza

Cited by 773 publications

References 0 publications

The Faith of Unbelief: Rochester's “Satyre,” Deism, and Religious Freethinking in Seventeenth-Century England

The Faith of Unbelief: Rochester's “Satyre,” Deism, and Religious Freethinking in Seventeenth-Century England

Transposing the Merton Thesis: Apostolic Spirituality and the Establishment of the Jesuit Scientific Tradition

Science, Tradition, and the Science of Tradition

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