Module 4

Week 4

 

I hope you enjoyed your Shakespeare this week. I’m looking forward to reading your comments.

 

We’ve been focusing on the early Modern thought world and its underpinnings in the Classical Western philosophical past. But Europeans didn’t develop their “modern” ideas and outlooks in a vacuum. Scholars from the East had been major preservers of the Western philosophical tradition while Western Europe itself experienced the 1000-year intellectual recession we now call the Medieval period. Med-ieval, literally between times. As in, between the Classical period and the Modern… as if whatever lay in between had no value, which is about how many early Modern Europeans seemed to feel about it. 

 

This week, before we move on from the Renaissance, let’s have a look at some of the non-Western contributions to this early Modern thought world. 

 

From the philosophical arena, and while still pondering the work of Aristotle, watch this NPR segment that highlights the contributions of Averroes, an Islamic scholar, to the evolving world view of the time:

 

Averroes. The Commentator on Aristotle and a case study in medieval v modern world views

https://www.npr.org/2020/08/05/899435905/reframing-history-the-commentator

 

Then, looking at much-celebrated early scientific accomplishments, we will turn to the discoveries of Copernicus. You can learn a little about Copernicus here… note the picture of his instruments on display at the university in Krakow… if you visit and look at them up close, you’ll see that the astrolabe he used was labeled in Arabic. That’s right, many of the Europeans of the early Modern world relied on previous discoveries and instruments developed by scholars from the Islamic and Byzantine worlds. 

 

https://www.local-life.com/krakow/articles/discover-copernicus-kopernikus-krakow

 

After learning a little about Copernicus from the people of Krakow who are so proud of him, use Google Scholar to find and read this scholarly article examining the originality of his work:

 

Kokowski, Michal. “Copernicus, Arabic Science, and the Scientific (R)evolution”. From Asia, Europe, and the Emergence of Modern Science.

 

You should be able to download a PDF version of this article for free and without logging in to any databases. If you cannot, let me know and I’ll email you a copy.

 

Finally, what does all this talk of early Modern history and the Modern world view mean for us living today? In what will no doubt come to be known as the cursed year of 2020? Are these early foundations of the Western thought-world still relevant? Read this WSJ article for a short but interesting discussion of this question. You may need access to WSJ through the NDNU library. If you can’t get this article, please ask the Librarian for assistance or let me know and I’ll get it to you.

 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/philosophy-for-a-time-of-crisis-11598543519?mod=hp_featst_pos3

 

When you’re all done reading, watching and thinking, spend 30 minutes in meditationreflecting on what you’ve learned and vaguely wondering “so what?” In what ways did anything you read or watched help you better understand the nature of “Modernity”? Write a blog post that answers this question and which makes clear reference to each of the readings / segments.