(a) Identify the author of the passage (e.g. Descartes)
(b) Comment briefly on the meaning of the passage.
You need to show that you understand what the passage is saying. Avoid the
temptation to simply tell us what else the author of the passage may have said on a
range of other topics. Stick to what is being said in the passage you have been
presented with. Do not quote or cite other material, and take care with your wording
of the answer, as your ability to focus on what matters will be judged important.
(c) Comment on the historical significance of the passage.
This is the trickiest part of the exercise. The task here is to say why the passage
matters by situating it in a wider historical context. For example, the passage might be
representative of a widely held view of the time, or it might signify an important
break with the past, or it might have been important for a subsequent generation of
thinkers, or it may reflect the influence of certain other ideas of the time at which it
was written, but which are not made explicit in the passage.
PASSAGES
a. So then if we find that the structure of the universe was ever described by positing
six mobile orbits around an immobile sun, such an astronomical theory was
indeed correct. Now we find that Copernicus does indeed have six orbits, and each
pair of them in such proportion to each other that the five [regular geometric]
bodies can be accurately fitted between them… There is nothing more to add but
Plato’s saying’ God always geometrises’.
b. The force which retains the celestial bodies in their orbits has hitherto been called
‘centripetal force’ but it now being made plain that it can be no other than a
gravitating force we shall hereafter call it ‘gravity’… But our purpose is only to
trace out the quantity and properties of this force from the phenomena … in a
mathematical way… I say in a mathematical way, to avoid all questions about the
nature or quality of this force, which we would not be understood to determine by
any hypothesis.
c. I must give some consideration to what we call ‘heat’, for I must suspect that in
general people have a conception of this which is very remote from the truth,
believing heat to be a real attribute, property and quality which actually resides in
the material body by which we feel ourselves warmed…. Those materials which
produce heat in us and make us feel warmth… would be a multitude of minute
particles having certain shapes and moving with certain velocities. Meeting with
our bodies they penetrate by means of their consummate subtlety, and their touch,
which we feel, made in their passage with our substance, is the sensation we call
heat… I do not believe at all than in addition to shape, number, motion,
penetration, and touch there is any other quality … [in nature] which is ‘heat’.
d. A spherical loadstone, when floated in water, moves circularly on its centre... And
this circular movement of the loadstone to its true and natural position shows that
the earth is fitted, and by its own forces adapted for diurnal circular motion… The
earth’s globe is directed and revolves magnetically…. The earth therefore rotates
… by an energy that is innate, manifest, conspicuous… The earth moves by its
primary form and natural desire, for the conservation, perfecting and beautifying
of its parts.
e. It would be impossible to find another person who in the name of philosophy
could invent vainer suppositions and fabricate such foolish and contrary reasons to
accommodate such levity as is discernible in his arguments… For all those who
posit a body of infinite size, ascribe to it neither centre nor boundary. For he who
speaketh of … the void, … ascribeth to it neither … upper, nor lower, nor
intermediate regions, assuming moreover that there are in this space countless
bodies such as our earth and other earths, our sun and other suns, which all
revolve within this infinite space, … around their own centres… Thus the earth no
more than any other world is at the centre… Thus the earth is not in the centre of
the universe; it is central only to its surrounding space.
ANY responses would be greatly appreciated....
thanks guys
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