Galileo and the Relationship between Man and Nature

Discuss about the Technics and Praxis for Philosophy of Technology.

Galileo was an eminent scientist and professor in the 17^th century and his life is a picture showing the conflict between dogma and scientific evidence. His life is an example showing the constancy of human nature during the period of crisis and in the face of oppression. Arguably, his life showed the needs for the mankind with reference to progress in science. He was inquisitive about the telescope that showed legacy of knowledge being used by the powerful against the mankind. There showed a clash between an individual conscience and society. His life also depicts that the relationship of a human with nature is inevitable. The man has to choose between his personal thoughts and safety. His innovative ideas were discouraged by the Church people forcing him to choose his safety over his personal ideology. He was sent to house arrest forcing him to recant his beliefs and accept the Catholic Church as the supreme power (Brecht 2015).

The play Life of Galileo depicted that how a person could change by making transformations in one’s thoughts and ideas (Young 2014). People are influenced by nature according to their needs and interests. Galileo had shortage of money that made him steal the idea of telescope and gain monetary benefits. This shows the philosophy between the human nature and his needs. Galileo was in need for money that made him steal the idea of telescope. During his imprisonment by the Church, he transformed over a new leaf.  He did continuous progress contributing to the science field. He observed nature and expanded his thoughts in the field of science. Man is encompassed in the realm of nature. The man’s relationship with the nature lies in the biosphere like the earth, sun and all the entities that are necessary to live. The nature is present within oneself in the form of materialized thing and information. The external principles govern human life and if it disappears, life is lost (Cederblom 2012).

Galileo made notable discoveries and innovations in the field of science during his years of imprisonment in the Church. He invented a telescope that was based on Hans Lippershey idea to view images of the earth and help to explore the sky. He observed the celestial bodies carefully like the moon, planets and stars. He also observed the different phases of Venus, moons orbiting around Jupiter, discovery of sunspots, craters of the moon, Milky Way discovery and other distinguished work in the field of physics and science. This shows the unique relation of man with the nature. Man continuously shows curiosity and inclination towards nature that leads to innovation (Chi, Glaser and Farr 2014). Galileo questioned the traditional beliefs about the solar system, social system, economic and religious beliefs. This shows how he transformed his thoughts and perceptions towards a new scientific approach leading to innovation when compared to his previous life (Shapere 2012). His continuous experiments and personal interest about the nature helped him to experiment and discover the nature. His personal interests in context to nature made him innovative and made progress in the field of science, astronomy and physics.

Philosophy of Technology and Moral Obligations

Philosophy is an attempt to understand the occurrence of things in a broad sense. The philosophy of technology is concerned with technological innovations have an impact on the society and culture. Philosophy in technology is the ability to understand the designing and creation of artifacts and how the things in nature are created (Rapp 2012). The technology imitates nature and the creations made in the field of technology from the nature’s perspective. The technology field also has moral obligations that raise questions of responsibility. The judgments and decisions made in the field of science and technology influences humans and the nature (Ihde 2012). Similarly the field of business and publication has moral obligations that humans abide by. The business is a collaborative activity therefore; there is a need to follow the societal laws for social relations in the business world. The publication world also demands moral principles as people should view their ideas in the path to enlighten without hurting the sentiments of the people. Galileo published his works in Italian rather than Latin that was well understood by the common people. Moral obligations also persist in context to personal relationships as it guides an individuals’ behavior being in a relationship. The moral values underpin the personal relationships in people and the personal interests.  

Galileo’ life showed the conflicts between an individual’s needs, science and society. The monetary crisis made him steal the idea of telescope and the oppression from the higher authorities of the Church made him recant his opinions and beliefs. The torture by the Church people made him choose his survival over his scientific profession. He betrayed his scientific principles by recanting his opinions and scientific ideas. However, he was able to complete his work while he was in prison. He continuously transformed his thoughts towards a scientific approach led to the invention of notable scientific theories. Even after his imprisonment, he continues writing his findings in Italian so that he could project his ideas to the common people. He was brave enough to go above the Scripture interpretations and placed science above all.

The relationship of man with nature is the placement of mankind within the existence of environment. The human nature is concerned with the expansion of the forces that are productive and leads to fulfillment of universal needs and man’s organized transformation into material environment (Habermas 2014). Galileo observed that two things falling from different heights fall at the same time leads to the invention of theory of relativity. This theory formed the basic framework for the Newton’s laws of Motion. These innovations have some moral obligations that form the basis for philosophical discussions. The human actions have direct consequences that would lead to innovation or destruction. The nature man relationship is ambiguous as the nature is considered as a provider as well as an enemy. The technology and continuous innovation made by humans have both positive and negative implications on the nature. The technology reflects the human cognition, actions and constrains. Therefore, every human action would have repercussions on the mankind and the society as a whole.

Civil Disobedience, Morality, and Enlightenment

Civil disobedience means active and professed refusal of people to obey particular commands, laws and demands of government or international power. According to Thoreau (2012), civil disobedience can be used as a ritualistic violation or symbolic violation of law except rejecting the whole system. On the other hand, morality refers to action, intention and decision difference between proper and improper distinguishes. As opined by Clayton and Stevens (2014), morality may be a part of principles that is derived from code of conduct of a specific culture, philosophy or religion. Clayton and Stevens (2014) argued that mortality can be acquired from principle, on which a person has belief and it must be universal. People can deliberately break specific laws like form peaceful blockade or facility illegally occupation via occurrence of violence. This may be a specific form of civil disobedience. It is expected that the authority can attack the people or may beat them. Thoreau (2012) defined the civil disobedience as pretention of relation of citizen to their State and the laws of State. Civil disobedience can be distinguished from constitutional impasse of any agencies.

Morality has a deep relation with ethics and enlightenment. Enlightenment means the emergence of human being from self incurred minority (Kant 1996). Minority is an inability to convince one to use the understanding of that person except any direction from others. On the other hand, Delmas (2016) said that minority can be self incurred at the time when it became the cause of lies and the person is lack of knowledge. The person may be lack of courage and resolution also to utilise it except anyone’s help. In case of civil disobedience, a natural and common result of undue respect for law is that one may watch a file of colonel, corporal, soldiers, captain and privates, marching admirably over the hills to fight against the wills of them. They have an aim to disobedient the rules of the government. Civil disobedience comes from the negligence of minority people. The soldiers of civil disobedience protested against the government to fight for the minority people to give them back their rights.  However, for an individual it is difficult to fight against the government and get back the rights of minority (Kant 1996). It is a long time process and need a lot of people. People’s morality and ethics are almost same and it depends on obligation, duty and principles of conduct to reserve the ethics. Thoreau believed that enlightenment can come via the solitude. He wrote the “Civil Disobedience” after spending one night in jail with the slave people to know the reason of their disobedience (Thoreau 2012).

However, tribal morality is different from territorial morality (Williams 2012). Territory morality involves the property and dependency that cannot be damaged. In these sense, territorial morality is very permissive to allow the behaviour of people. Tribal morality is very prescriptive and imposes norms of collective on individuals. These norms may be very arbitrary and dependent culturally as well as flexible. The aim of the territorial mortality is on the rules that are universal and proper like ‘categorical imperative of Kant and graded absolutism of Geisler. (Fisher 2016) related the territorial morality development and contract ascendancy over status. The theories of civil disobedience are the justification against the governmental entities. In opposition, civil disobedience is the decision of the non governmental agencies like trade union, private universities and banks (Thoreau 2012). It reflects a great challenge to legal system to permit the taken decisions. It is essential to disobey the rules, which conflicts with morality and should take public civil disobedience form moderately than simply lawbreaking. Morality is the answer of the question, how to live a healthy life. It can be seen to address the particular question at social level via political sphere increases additional problems and the challenges.

Rawls (2013) suggested that civil disobedience should be non-violent and carefully chosen. Civil rebellion and civil disobedience can be justified by constitutional defects application whereas rebellion is more destructive. The defects justify use of civil disobedience and refuse to submit the arrest. Refraining of civil disobedience from violence is said to preserve the tolerance of society of civil disobedience. Intimidator, coercive disobedience and violent is more efficiently and effectively. It is equal and less effective than more justified. Group morality improves from the shared concepts and faith and often is codified for the regulation of behaviour r within a community or in a culture. People, who choose the moral action, are very popular to possess the ‘moral fiber’. Immoral behaviour can be labelled as degenerative socially. A continued group existence depends on large conformity to morality codes and the shortcoming to adjust the moral codes to respond new challenges. The new challenges sometimes are credited with demise of community. Within national movements, it can be felt that a nation cannot survive without the acknowledgement of common morality.

As mentioned by Kant (1996), political morality is relevant to behaviour of national government internationally. It supports the receiving host population. Wendt (2016) argued that if a particular action is right for one then it is right for the others or the community also. Morality has a relation with religion. However, many people misunderstand that morality and religion are synonyms (Williams 2012). Morality does not depend on the religion and it is an automatic assumption. Religion, ethics and morality are different and the action guide is also different. Civil disobedience of Thoreau described the responsibility of human to bring the justice to the people who need it. However civil disobedience is encouraged by the social responsibilities. Thoreau (2012) opined that he met with a man during the service in prison who was accused because of burning a barn. Thoreau found the man is very honest at his work and his intuition. Some studies showed that morality empirics in different countries and relationship between crime and belief. Higher rates of faith are highly related with creator’s worship with homicide of higher rates.

The relation between morality and religion is that religious beliefs should be advocated through moral values. The morality does not lie in the context to teach religion but follow moral norms (Wainwright 2014). People wear the cloak of religion and prate morality. Morality exists in the religion and it’s a practice particularly behavior. It is transformed into the forms of behavior and is considered as a religion. It is the development of oneself by inculcating moral values that would help to make progress in the society and development of civilization (Bloom 2012). The ethical movement in religion shows that moralistic activity tends to relate with religion. Religion is a kind of knowledge and morality is the life with which we lead that knowledge. If religion is the way to think and believe then morality is the way to desire, aim, live and how to behave. These tidings are explicitly depicted in the book Hind Swaraj by Mahatma Gandhi.

In the book Hind Swaraj or Indian Home rule by Mahatma Gandhi mentioned that the civilization is very irreligious. The civilians lack the power of courage and are not able to live in solitude. They waste their energy into intoxication. He described the condition of the women in England working as laborers in factories. In his book, Gandhi mentioned the importance of religion in his life and stated the condition of India as irreligious. People are tuning away from the God mentioning the lost of moral values from lives of people. All religion teaches us to be passive and the religious ambitions of people are illimitable (Sharma 2014). He also mentioned that the deceptive talks about religion are prevalent and the humbug of civilization is not to be found in religion. The Hindus and Mahomedans fight in the name of religion and shed blood. This causes death of thousands of people being murdered, burnt and tortured due to religious conflict.

These cruelties are not the part of any religion but have devastating effects on human life and sentiments. With the progressing civilization, people are losing their morale and practicing these heinous acts by disregarding religion. There is no end to these heinous acts and people are dying under the scorching flames of religion. Gandhi considered this as irreligious and stated that people should fight against it without disrespecting religion. Gandhi showed serious considerations about the condition of India. With respect to religion, God has set a limit for Man in regards of locomotion of one’s body; Man has overpowered that limit and proceeding in that path. God gifted human beings with intelligence so that they know their maker better but Man abuse religion forgetting his own maker. India is a country with people belonging to different religions and cannot cease into one nation. He explained that the introduction of foreigners has led to the merging of religions rather than disruption of religion. The conscious spirit of oneness and nationality does not allow the Indians to interfere in other’s religion. He said all the country men are one and they consider India as their own nation (Prasad 2016).

Gandhi developed the concept of Satyagraha through religion. He described Satyagraha as religion and it stays in every religion. Without the existence of religion, politics could not be advocated. He said that the modern civilization is irreligion and politics is articulated through religion (Puri 2015). Satyagraha is the philosophy of life. It is actually the religion that people abide by and it governs the life of the people. It is a new way of life that helps people to acquire the wealth of knowledge that is religion. It is a true religion and it encompasses the entire social life. It is a practical philosophy and a spiritual weapon that is only attained by self purification. The literal meaning of Satyagraha is truth and it is engraved in the realm of religion.

The core of every religion is truth and this formed the basis for his concept of Satyagraha and non-violence movement. He showed the use of religion in politics. He said that religion plays a constructive role in the field of politics. Gandhi was a man of religion and through this he evolved the concept of truth and non violence. He implemented Satyagraha through insistence of truth in people’s life and in the fight against the injustice. The political ideologies are based on truth or satya that helps to attain the power that is equivalent to the country’s religion (Hauser 2014). He critically analyzed the social aspects of religion that sought him to reform the religion and helped him to develop the concept of Satyagraha. The truth is a moral value that is the foundation of every sphere of life. The morality and religion forms the basis for the Satyagraha to evolve.

He reframed the concept of religion through truth and Satyagraha prevailed from that instance that is advocating non-violence through religion. Religion is true and it is the fundamental of all kinds of religion (George 2014). God is the purest form of truth and practicing it through Satyagraha is the real practice. As god is one for every religion in the same way the meaning of truth is same in every aspect of life. The nationality of a person is a pursuit of truth and it is worshiped above all. The God is the supreme power that is unseen and resides in the light of truth. In fact, God is the form of truth and when truth is practiced through religion it emerges as the undefeated power. Religion relies on the belief system and people’s beliefs are reflected through their concept of faith and truthfulness towards the supreme power that is God. The religion that brings a person in contact with the actual Maker that religion is above all other religion (Parel 2016). It makes a man face to face with the unseen power and helps him to discover the inner meaning of truth. The moral value of truth is the strongest weapon that defines the actual meaning of life. The above readings give a clear idea that Mahatma Gandhi developed his ideology of Satyagraha through truth and religion that is present in every sphere of life.

References

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