Worldviews, by Richard Dewitt

Roll Call: Even in the face of strong

evidence against it, I would find it very
difficult to give up my belief that
___________.

Part 1:  Fundamental Issues

1.  Worldviews
 This book presents intellectual history as a
transition through three worldviews.
 Aristotelian
 Newtonian
 Modern Scientific

Aristotelian
The Aristotelian worldview (named after the
philosopher Aristotle) is many ways quite
alien, and in other ways perfectly
commonsensical. Some of the beliefs
associated with this view are:
1. The earth is located at the center of
the universe.
2. The earth is stationary.
3. All other celestial bodies rotate
around the earth.
4. In the sublunar region there are four
basic elements: earth, air, fire,
water.
5. All basic elements have an essential
nature revealed by the way they move.
 Earth moves toward the center of
the universe.
 Water moves toward the center of
the universe, but not to the same
degree as earth.
 Air has a tendency to move above
water and earth.
 Fire has a tendency to move away
from the center of the universe.
6. The element ether, of which
celestial bodies are composed, has a
natural tendency toward circular
movement.
 7. Sublunar objects in motion naturally
tend to come to a halt.
8. Sublunar objects at rest will remain
at rest unless caused to move.
These beliefs are not, as presented here,
simply a list of claims that may be
independently exchanged.
E.g 1:, An Aristotelian physicist could not
simply discover one day that the Earth was
made partly of ether, since that would
conflict with the observed fact that it does
not move.
E.g., 2: (from book) An Aristotelian physicist
could not simply replace the belief that the
earth is at the center of the universe with
the belief that the earth revolves around the
sun.
E.g. 3: An Aristotelian physicist could use
these views to explain many observed
results. For example, it was well known that
water had a gaseous state that prevented it
from falling to earth, and this was due to it’s
being lifted by fire.
Newtonian
Eventually, astronomical data that had been
known for centuries and remained very
poorly explained by the Aristotelian
worldview caused people to seriously
contemplate the idea that the earth moves.
This is a commonplace belief today, but it
conflicts with common sense. It is very
important not to lose sight of this. You may
think of it as a basic and obvious fact that
the earth moves about the sun, but from an
Aristotelian perspective, that is not only not
obvious, but it is incredibly stupid.
According to the Newtonian worldview
(named after the great 17th – 18th century
physicist Isaac Newton):
1. The earth revolves on it’s axis once
every 24 hours.
2. The earth and the planets move in
elliptical orbits around the sun.
3. There are slightly more than 100
basic elements in the universe.
 4. Objects behave the way they do
because of external forces.
5. All objects, including planets and
stars, are composed of the same
basic elements.
6. Objects remain in the same state-
whether rest or motion- until acted on by
an external force. (There is no essential
difference between the two.)
Evidence and Common Sense
There is virtually no direct evidence that you
can produce on your own for the Newtonian
worldview. You can not observe the earth
moving, and you never observe anything
but celestial bodies moving without ever
coming to rest.
Science, then, is anything but common
sense.
Einstein once denigrated common sense
as
 “the collection of prejudices one has
acquired by age 18.”
and he also once said:
 “The whole of science is nothing more than
a refinement of everyday thinking.”

Here is an interesting article about the

relation between science and common
sense by John Horgan.
 In Defense of Common Sense