Pravda - dcera času – Špelda Daniel (2016)

On the Origin of the Idea of Progress in Knowledge The idea of progress in knowledge is not self-evident. It is usually thought to have entered philosophy and science from the outside through mysterious processes, such as the secularization of eschatology. In this book, the idea of progress in knowledge is understood as a specific type of epistemology that acknowledges the indispensable role of time in shaping knowledge about nature. This epistemology aimed to address the problems that arose in science and philosophy in the 16th and 17th centuries after it became clear that nature does not yield to human desire for knowledge. The first part of the book discusses the relationship between knowledge and time in several currents of Renaissance philosophy and science (M. Ficino, C. Bovillus, O. Croll, C. Gesner, M. Copernicus, J. Kepler). During this period, a prescriptive conception of progress did not emerge, as the belief in an anthropocentric teleology of the world included the possibility of achieving the knowledge that an individual needs. The second part of the book describes how early modern philosophy and science rejected teleological and vitalistic conceptions of the world and replaced them with the idea of an infinite contingent universe composed of atoms. Telescopes and microscopes convinced philosophers and scientists that human sensory perception is not teleologically adapted for empirical...