On G. Berkeley's Natural Philosophy And Philosophy Of Science

Modern scientific revolution in Europe has shown that natural philosophy in the 17th-century had been always dominated of two themes from Copernicus to Newton's: One is Plato-Pythagorean traditional School, and the other is mechanistic philosophy. In the mechanistic world, people think of the world as a machine that composed by the inert material and has nothing to do with people; that object moving is caused by external force, and follows a causality that is a strict mechanical determinism. Truly because of this, Berkeley who used philosophy thought of"object is a collection of the concept","exist if they are perceived"and"the theory of the God's will"built a natural philosophy system himself that is reflection to mechanics, chemistry, physics of the natural philosophy and the philosophy of science at that time. We perspective the modern philosophy of science by discussing the natural philosophy of Descartes and Newton, and We show Berkeley's natural Philosophy and Philosophy of Science by researching his thinking of Mechanistic and the thought of"Ether", Mechanics,"natural law". So it reflects a new trend of the idealism of the modern natural philosophy.Now, the author describes it from four aspects following by researching manner of"Synthesizing-specializing-epitomizing-generalizing". First, on the mechanical ideas, this paper researches the mechanist limitations in the philosophy of science by Berkeley's thinking of the optical-mechanical theory, material properties of mechanical theory, mechanical God, and the God of the soul and power, and it indicated that Berkeley is founded and reasonable. Second, on"Ether", Berkeley looked on the God and the human mind as the last real motive, and regarded that"Ether"was"the driving force or source of the original nature", and in"De Motu"built a critical philosophical system which aimed to Newtonism. Third, on Mechanics, Berkeley criticized the absolute and real physical thought of entity about Newton's"force"and the metaphysical nature criticism of physical movement, and opposed the thought of"realist"in mechanics, and at last solved the mechanical problems by using speculative thought of"non-materialistic". Fourth, on"natural law", Berkeley argued in favor of his idealism by pointing out its universal nature and analyzing the nature of its meaning.Thus, Berkeley tore a fissure to Mechanical philosophy before, when Galileo, Boyle, Descartes, Newton and others believed in a proposition that nature is transparent to human reason, and confirmed hard and disclosed an invisible system in natural phenomena, which it was not inherent thought and idea of nature of material initial, absolute of motion of time and space, opposition of science and religion, transparency of material, but comprised of thought of natural philosophy and philosophy of science by feature of nature of physical concepts, relativity of motion of time and space, intermediary of"Ether", ultimate absolute of the God, harmony of things"Chain", coordination of science and religion, agnostic of body, and thus built an idealistic ideology."In short, it will be asked, how, upon our principles, any tolerable account can be given, or any final cause assigned of an innumerable multitude of bodies and machines, framed with the most exquisite art, which in the common philosophy have very apposite uses assigned them, and serve to explain abundance of phenomena."...