Deck 5: The Scientific Revolution

Question 1

One reason that the scientific revolution occurred in Europe and not some other culture (e.g. Islam or China).

A) Islam and China were intellectually underdeveloped at the time and new little about philosophy.
B) Europe never experienced a feudal system.
C) Creation of self-governing Universities those were relatively free in terms of inquiry.
D) Islamic culture lost ground by having no knowledge of the earlier works of Aristotle.

Answer 1

C

Question 2

One reason that the scientific revolution occurred in Europe before Islamic countries was:

A) Unlike the Bible, the Koran was viewed by Muslims as the final authority on every aspect of life, including the nature of things.
B) Unlike the Koran, the Bible was viewed by Europeans as the final authority on every aspect of life, including the nature of things.
C) European countries banned all books including the Bible. This made European scholars work even harder to develop knowledge.
D) None of these are reasons.

Answer 2

A

Question 3

Unlike European philosophers, Islamic scholars used and developed earlier Greek Mathematics:

A) to reconcile theology and natural philosophy.
B) to argue against the teachings of the Koran, causing revolution.
C) only for useful and every day practical purposes
D) all of these.

Answer 3

C

Question 4

In terms of understanding the workings of the natural world, find the best match to the following statement: "The problems of physics are of no importance to us in our religious affairs and livelihoods. Therefore, we must leave them alone".

A) European scholar
B) Islamic scholar
C) William of Ockham
D) Guttenberg

Question 5

In terms of understanding the workings of the natural world, find the best match to the following statement: "In natural philosophy, everyone should be free to say freely whatever he pleases".

A) William of Ockham
B) al-Ghazali
C) Guttenberg
D) none of these

Question 6

Historians say the Europe gave rise to science rather than Islam because only Europe:

A) Separated church and state
B) Developed cities, business, and corporations
C) Rejected the total authority of the Bible on all subjects
D) all of the above

Question 7

The author notes that a unique feature of Chinese intellectual life that inhibited the development of natural philosophy and science was the "mandarins". The mandarins were _________.

A) The Emperors of China
B) a group of natural philosophers that engaged in astronomical research.
C) a group of land owners and farmers that opposed any type of change.
D) a class of government bureaucrats the controlled the reins of government.

Question 8

Suppose we see a bowling ball hit the pins and the pins fall down. If you believe that the bowling ball did not cause the pins to fall, but instead God caused the pins to fall by recreating the universe then you favor the doctrine called _______ which was favored ______.

A) naturalism, in Islam.
B) occasionalism, by the early Greek scholars.
C) occasionalism, in Islam.
D) naturalism, by Newton.

Question 9

When considering a changing world, both Christian and Islamic scholars wrestled with the question of everyday changes. Although secondary causation worked for most European philosophers, Islamic thinkers rejected it because:

A) It developed directly from the Christian Bible.
B) It gave too much power to God and no credit to human types of change.
C) It took some power and omnipotence away from God making God less active.
D) None of these.

Question 10

The idea of secondary causation explains change in the world by suggesting:

A) That in every instant of time, God annihilates and re-creates the universe which results in all the little change we see.
B) There are really no true changes in the world; we simply perceive movement not causality.
C) That all change, even little secondary changes are caused by God acting directly on an object.
D) None of these.

Question 11

Although not favored by Islamic thinkers, the concept of ________ developed by medieval thinkers was important to the development of natural science in Europe.

A) separation of mind and body
B) secondary causation
C) an omnipotent God
D) primary causation

Question 12

Sigmund Freud called this work the first great blow to the human ego:

A) Newton's Principia Mathematica
B) Copernicus' Revolution of the Heavenly Orbs
C) Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems
D) Descartes' L'Homme

Question 13

As a result of the scientific revolution, human beings came to think of the universe as a:

A) book
B) living organism
C) machine
D) collection of random events

Question 14

The mechanized world view led scientists to see Machines_________.

A) as God created them and everything, with internal and inherent purpose.
B) as if they moved by inner purpose, although they had none.
C) as having magical power.
D) none of these.

Question 15

After Newton's laws of motion were published, the machine analogy became popular among thinkers because it:

A) helped demonstrate that God did not exist.
B) demonstrated that God was an imperfect and flawed engineer of the universe.
C) helped educate people to the wonder, joy, and power of mathematics.
D) originally gave support to religions fight against magic and alchemy.

Question 16

Imagine a high school chemistry lab teacher doing an "experiment" each semester in which she fills a balloon with hydrogen gas and ignites the balloon (bang!). Using Kuhn's proposal, which of the two scientific traditions is the lab teachers demonstration most similar to?

A) Classical science
B) Islamic science
C) Experimental science
D) Purposeful science.

Question 17

Match the following statement to the person: One should begin with careful observations of facts and experiments on nature, and then should form general conclusions only when they were fully justified.

A) Plato
B) Descartes
C) Bacon
D) Aristotle

Question 18

Which of the following would Francis Bacon agree with?

A) knowledge should be useful as it was power.
B) knowledge should be pursued collectively in an organized, cumulative enterprise.
C) knowledge is best found by working upward from facts, often from experiments.
D) all of these.

Question 19

Which of the following represents the science we know today?

A) the classical tradition
B) the Baconian experimental tradition
C) the merging of both Kuhn's two forms of science.
D) none of these, a unique new form of science developed in the early 20^th century.

Question 20

Thomas Kuhn distinguished two forms of science one known as mathematical or classical and the second being Baconian. Which of the following characteristics is uniquely true of the Baconian tradition of sciences but not classical?

A) Performing careful experiments in order to form general conclusions about the world.
B) Proposing precise mathematical theories to explain phenomena.
C) Observing and explaining the world as we experience it every day.
D) Searching for a single truth and deducing a larger explanation of the world.

Question 21

According to scholars from the time of the Greeks (i.e. Aristotle) through the Middle Ages, when we perceive an object we:

A) perceive it as it really is with all its sensory properties (e.g. beauty)
B) perceive it indirectly through a copy, or idea, in consciousness
C) actively construct the object via the Categories of Apperception
D) are perceiving a divinely necessary illusion

Question 22

Based on Galileo's ideas, which of the following is a secondary sense property?

A) mass
B) beauty
C) spatial position
D) occupying space

Question 23

The concept of secondary sense properties created a new world that did not exist for ancient philosophers. The new world was ______ and was populated by ____.

A) mathematics, true formulas that explained the world.
B) consciousness, ideas.
C) science, deductive reasoning.
D) the view from nowhere, the idea of Plato's forms.

Question 24

Scholars recognized that the Cartesian mechanized world view (watch) offered new support for God (watchmaker), it also resulted in _________.

A) Making God more distant from human life.
B) Giving support to Islamic philosophy.
C) Making people truly believe that God had made the world to serve only human needs.
D) All of these.

Question 25

Which of the following created a framework for thinking about mind and body within which virtually all of us in psychology have worked within since?

A) Galileo
B) Bacon
C) Spinoza
D) Descartes

Question 26

Descartes conception of Mind and Body was carefully worked out with a religious-scientific framework. However, Descartes faced a problem and that problem was:

A) how to explain why both animals and humans have immortal souls.
B) how to explain the immortal human soul in a mechanical world and within a mechanical human body.
C) how he personally could believe in science and religion at the same time.
D) how could he be loyal to both the ideas of Aristotle and those of Galileo.

Question 27

Central to Descartes' physiological treatment of the "animal machine" was

A) the concept of the reflex
B) his analysis of depth perception
C) psychophysical parallelism
D) introspection

Question 28

Which of the following did Descartes argue was unique to humans and not seen in animals?

A) Only humans have language.
B) Only humans can learn simple, automatic responses to stimuli.
C) Humans have experiences and are aware of their surroundings; animals have no experiences and are not aware of their surroundings.
D) Humans have a mechanical like body, while animals do not.

Question 29

Which of the following is one way that humans differ from animals according to Descartes?

A) Humans have language.
B) Humans are self-aware and have complex reflective awareness.
C) Humans exhibit flexible behavior.
D) All of these

Question 30

Descartes found that he could doubt the existence of everything, except:

A) God
B) The validity of his own sensations
C) Cogito, ergo sum
D) E pluribus Unum

Question 31

Descartes doubting let him to conclude that there are two worlds. One is the objective scientifically knowable material world and the other is in some sense:

A) a subjective world of human consciousness.
B) the world of a person as a thinking being.
C) a world only known through introspection.
D) all of these.

Question 32

If Descartes' picture of the mind-the Cartesian Theater-is correct, then psychology can be a science with a special methodology, namely:

A) behavior analysis
B) mental testing
C) introspection
D) brain anatomy

Question 33

The first vexing question for Cartesian dualism was raised by Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia who asked Descartes:

A) why animals did not have souls as people do
B) if it might be possible to teach an ape to talk
C) if the human soul were truly immortal
D) how spiritual mind and physical body could interact

Question 34

Descartes abandoned work on L'Homme because:

A) he could not give a physical account of consciousness
B) of Princess Elisabeth's devastating criticisms
C) without a microscope he could not see individual neurons
D) of the condemnation of Galileo by the Roman Inquisition

Question 35

According to Leibniz, mind and body:

A) interact
B) are really the same thing
C) run on parallel, non-interacting tracks.
D) never get along and are in a state of tension.

Question 36

Match the following statement about the mind and the body to the person: "Two identical and perfect clocks, both set to the same time and started at the same moment".

A) Leibniz
B) Descartes
C) Hobbes
D) Locke

Question 37

According to Hobbes, human nature is:

A) inherently virtuous
B) neither good nor evil
C) capable of improvement through learning
D) selfish and therefore violent

Question 38

Leibniz gave a new formulation of the mind body problem, that:

A) Mind and body interact via the cerebrum, not the pineal gland.
B) Only mind exists (idealism).
C) Only physical things exist (materialism).
D) Mind and body are separate but do not interact.

Question 39

Leibniz was the first philosopher of the mind to propose:

A) the concept of the threshold
B) that some mental states are unconscious
C) the concept of attention (apperception)
D) all of the above

Question 40

Spinoza rejected Cartesian Dualism and thus believed there was no mind-body interaction problem. He argued that:

A) We possess absolute and unbounded freedom of choice.
B) All our actions are, in fact determined; "moral responsibility" is an illusion.
C) There was a God and he was the ultimate cause of all behavior
D) None of these

Question 41

Spinoza extended his deterministic analysis to human nature. In some ways his beliefs resemble the modern work of B. F. Skinner. These beliefs can be summarized by the statement:

A) Although we feel we are free it is an illusion.
B) All punishment increases the probability of a response.
C) Descartes was right the mind and body are separate.
D) People have some free will but some of their behavior is also determined by the environment.

Question 42

Pascal made many contributions to the scientific revolution, one of which was:

A) to write about the relationships between human nature and human society.
B) the idea that the human mind could be conceived of in terms of an information processor, similar to a calculating machine.
C) to draw a sharp distinction between universal forms, and sensory awareness.
D) all of these.

Question 43

Modern economics and finance often involves decisions based uncertain and
Incomplete information. These fields might not exist today without the
Contributions of:

A) Hobbes
B) Pascal
C) Descartes
D) Leibniz

Question 44

Discuss several reasons why the Scientific Revolution took place in Europe and not some other advanced culture (e.g. Islam, China).

Question 45

Both Christian and Islamic thinkers agreed that Aristotle's unmoved mover was God and the primary cause of change in the universe. Explain how they disagreed over secondary causation and how this difference help develop the growth of European science.

Question 46

Summarize how Newton's Principia Mathematica (1687) led to a Mechanized view of the universe?

Question 47

Explain why a "clockwork" conception of the universe had important implications for psychology.

Question 48

During the time of the Scientific Revolution, Kuhn proposed two distinct scientific traditions. Name and contrast these two traditions and explain how each conducted "experiments".

Question 49

Explain why Francis Bacon is considered a Modernist, especially in terms of scientific knowledge.

Question 50

Let us agree that the actress Mila Kunis is beautiful. Contrast how Aristotelian scholars would explain our perception of her beauty with that of post-Cartesian scholars.

Question 51

Explain what the author of the textbook means when he describes Descartes ideas as a "…tortured attempt to preserve a Christian soul in a mechanistic universe".

Question 52

As the author of the text notes, "With the Cartesian Theater, the psychology of consciousness was born, yet it was not yet a science". Yet, the Cartesian Theater brings with it at least two difficulties. Explain these two problems.

Question 53

Summarize Leibniz's theory of Parallelism and how it attempted to solve the mind-body problem.

Question 54

Summarize Thomas Hobbes' idea about the relation between human nature and human society.

Question 55

Describe Pascal's contribution to the modern world involving a new way of thinking about belief and action. How did Pascal attempt to convince unbelievers in the existence of God?