Is rationalism best understood as a rational phenomenon - Essay Example

tion of the earth and the stars (the earth is the centre of the universe; the stars are fixed to a crystalline sphere and are unchanging and eternal) went on for about one thousand years. Even though scientific quests existed, it was not till the 16th century that our worldview actually began to change. A host of new thinkers made radical changes in the world by ushering in rational and scientific investigation. Let us take a look at the important path breaking events in the development of modern and scientific and rational view of the world: Thus with the new dawn of Rationalism in the 16th century came a new spirit.

The Rationalists held the view that one could arrive at knowledge, not by religious faith and revelation, but by reason. Their faith in the human reason brought in a new phenomenon in the thinking trends of the world. Their basic principle as given by Leibniz’s Principle of Sufficient Reason was that everything taking place in this world can be explained rationally and that knowledge (truth) can be gained by deduction. This new phenomenon is also evident in the Rationalists’ implicit faith in human intellect and understanding power, which can also be termed as intuition.

If a man throws a ball into the air, what can we expect? The ball will come back to the earth. I know that this incident is only confirming the truth about the laws of the world. But there are two ways to come to this ultimate truth. The man can throw the ball a number of times and comes to a conclusion that the ball does not stay up but comes back to earth, or he can understand that some basic principle or law makes the ball come back to earth. The thinkers belonging to the first school of thought are called Empiricists, who believe that law of gravity can be established by observation.

Throwing the ball up countless times will give the same result. So, we see that the empiricists’ point of view is dependent upon experience. If experience changes in this regard, the