Характеристика философии Нового времени может be summarized as follows. This era of the development of human thought substantiated the scientific revolution and prepared the Enlightenment. Quite often in the special literature there is an assertion that it was during this period that scientific cognition methods were developed, namely empiricism, which proclaimed the priority of experience based on feelings, and rationalism, which defended the idea of reason as a carrier of truth. However, he and the other approach considered mathematics and its methods ideal for any science. Features of the philosophy of the New time in this regard can be seen on the example of Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes.
Opponents
The English philosopher believed that humanthe mind is so "littered" with a kind of "idols" that prevent it from perceiving real things, which it brought to the absolute experience and direct study of nature. Only this, according to Bacon, can lead to the independence and independence of the researcher, as well as to new discoveries. Therefore, experiment-based induction is the only way to truth. After all, the latter, from the point of view of the thinker, is the daughter of not authorities, but of the epoch. Bacon was one of the famous theorists with whom the New Age began. The philosophy of his contemporary Descartes was based on different principles. He was a supporter of deduction and reason as a criterion of truth. He agreed that everything should be doubted, but he believed that thinking was the only way to distinguish error from truth. It is only necessary to adhere to a clear and definite logical order and move from simple things to more complex ones. But, besides these thinkers, this epoch is interesting with several more names.
New Time: John Locke's Philosophy
This thinker has proposed a compromise betweentheories of Descartes and Bacon. He agreed with the latter that only experience can be the source of ideas. But by this term he understood not only external sensations, but also internal reflections. That is, thinking too. Since in itself a person is a kind of “clean sheet” on which experience draws certain images, these images, or qualities, can also be sources of knowledge. But you can only talk about the most essential ideas. More complex concepts such as "God" or "good" are a combination of simple ones. In addition, as the thinker believed, we are so arranged that some qualities that we perceive are objective and correspond to reality, while others reflect the specificity of the action of things on the senses and can deceive us.
New time: David Hume's philosophy
Another feature of the time being described isthe emergence of agnosticism and skepticism. Both of these areas are associated with David Hume, who chose to proceed not from high truths, but from common sense. "What sense to talk about Being, - he thought, - it is better to think about something practical." Therefore, mathematics is the most reliable knowledge, it can be proved logically. In this idea, as if all the New Time was concentrated. Hume's philosophy leads him to the conclusion that all other knowledge, even coming from experience, is only our assumptions, and it can be purely probabilistic in nature. All sciences assume that any action has a reason, but it is not always possible to understand it. We cannot know for sure whether our knowledge of the Universe and its order are correct. But some ideas are very useful because they can be applied in practice.
