Van Doren

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The scientific revolution had a huge influence as to why people thought they could be God. Van Doren explains how parts of science led these individuals to believe that they could be God if they could understand how the world worked and why it worked that way. He explains that there are five parts of science. These parts of science were biology, physics, mathematics, chemistry, and psychology. With the knowledge of these five parts of science, people thought they could answer any questions by using scientific method and play the role of God in explaining how the world works, why it works that way, what the world was made up of, and also what people think and why they think a certain way in certain situations. Biology allowed people to know the make up of the world and people. Physics and mathematics allowed individuals to see how the world worked and why it worked a certain way. Psychology showed the people that we could figure out what and how people thought by doing experiments on groups of people.
Van Doren explains how these five parts of science are not better than any certain one. He explains how everyone in that day believed that the world was flat and not round as we know it today. He explains how they thought that science is the one method that will allow them to arrive at the “truth.” He explains how science was a common thing that “everyday people” could understand. This led many to believe that they could answer a lot of questions thus making them think they could be God. Van Doren tells us that there are three assumption of science. The first assumption of science is that we can describe what goes on in a physical world. He explained how scientists are both honest and humble. They never claim more than they can prove and love to talk about their findings with other scientists or poets. This first assumption gives people the ideas that we can know what is going on in the physical world, why it goes that way, and how it works. The second assumption of science is we can explain why something is happening. This deals more with actual things and not ideas or feelings as Van Doren said. This assumption dealt more with the issues concerning the external world and its working rather than the inner part and how it works.

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