AN EFFECT of NATURALISTIC PHILOSOPHY: a COMPARATIVE STUDY *Jiban Buragohain *Purabi Maitra
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GLOBUS Journal of Progressive Education A Refereed Research Journal Vol 5 / No 1 / Jan -Jun 2015 ISSN: 2231-1335 AN EFFECT OF NATURALISTIC PHILOSOPHY: A COMPARATIVE STUDY *Jiban Buragohain *Purabi Maitra INTRODUCTION 20TH-CENTURY PHILOSOPHY The term Indian philosophy refers to any of several Bertrand Russell schools of philosophical thought that originated in the Indian subcontinent, including Hindu Within the last century, philosophy has philosophy, Buddhist philosophy, and Jain increasingly become a professional discipline philosophy. Having the same or rather intertwined practiced within universities, like other academic origins, all of these philosophies have a common disciplines. Accordingly, it has become less general underlying themes of Dharma and Karma, and and more specialized. In the view of one prominent similarly attempt to explain the attainment of recent historian: “Philosophy has become a highly emancipation. They have been formalized and organized discipline, done by specialists primarily promulgated chiefly between 1000 BC to a few for other specialists. The number of philosophers centuries AD. has exploded, the volume of publication has swelled, and the subfields of serious philosophical In the history of the Indian subcontinent, following investigation have multiplied. Not only is the broad the establishment of a Vedic culture, the field of philosophy today far too vast to be development of philosophical and religious thought embraced by one mind, something similar is true over a period of two millennia gave rise to what even of many highly specialized subfields.” came to be called the six schools of astika, or orthodox, Indian or Hindu philosophy. These REVIEW OF LITERATURE schools have come to be synonymous with the greater religion of Hinduism, which was a Best and khan (1993) asserts that “parading a development of the early Vedic religion. long list of annoyed studies relating to the problem is In effective and inappropriate. Only Ancient Persian those studies that are plainly relevant, competently executed and clearly reported should be included.” Persian philosophy can be traced back as far as Old Iranian philosophical traditions and thoughts, with According to Harvard University’s Department of their ancient Indo-Iranian roots. These were Philosophy: “Philosophy is the systematic and considerably influenced by Zarathustra’s teachings. critical study of fundamental questions that arise Throughout Iranian history and due to remarkable both in everyday life and through the practice of political and social influences such as the other disciplines.” It encompasses a wide variety of Macedonian, the Arab, and the Mongol invasions subjects. Because it is not science, it doesn’t rely of Persia, a wide spectrum of schools of thought on provable facts or research. ErraticImpact.com arose. These espoused a variety of views on offers a Philosophy Research Base and study guide. philosophical questions, extending from Old The 20th Century Philosophy Topics & Ideas page Iranian and mainly Zoroastrianism-influenced explores the Continental tradition, which includes traditions to schools appearing in the late pre- the existentialists, phenomenologist’s, structure Islamic era, such as Manicheism and Mazdakism, lists, post-structure lists, critical theorists, as well as various post-Islamic schools. Iranian theoretical feminists, psychologists, post- philosophy after Arab invasion of Persia is modernists and deconstructionists. Another characterized by different interactions with the old category is the American/British Analytic tradition Iranian philosophy, the Greek philosophy and with that includes the philosophers of mind, scientific the development of Islamic philosophy. epistemologists, neopragmatists, logical positivists Illuminations and the transcendent theosophy are and ordinary language philosophers. regarded as two of the main philosophical traditions of that era in Persia. Zoroastrianism has been identified as one of the key early events in the development of philosophy. *Research Scholar, Sunrise University, Alwar, Rajasthan *Supervisor, Sunrise University, Alwar, Rajasthan 1 Bruno (1988) Concluded in his study that students Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage, for achieved in Mathematics significantly higher example, is a brutally honest portrait of a gruesome when taught with complementary instructional war. One of its most haunting passages involves the strategies congruent with their hemispheric young soldier coming across a decaying corpse. thinking style. This is what real war is like - death and decay. Lavach (1991) conducted a study to find out Naturalism was also influenced by the work of the difference of different subject stream on Charles Darwin. Social Darwinism, or the survival their thinking style and reported that humanities of the fittest, was a new concept in the late 1800s. subject depend on a more diffuse and perhaps Naturalists focused on how class and heredity divergent thinking style. They exhibited right aren’t just obstacles to be overcome but hemispheric style whereas natural science subject inescapable barriers to our success. appear to prefer more integrated or left hemispheric style. Social service student exhibited the similar Think about any Charles Dickens novel. These are performer for styles of thinking. from the Victorian era, which also preceded naturalism. What happens to Oliver Twist? Born Sternberg and Grigorenko (1993) studied the with nothing, he lives happily ever after in the end. thinking styles of gifted children. The findings In a naturalist story, he’d never escape poverty. He Indicate that three thinking styles; judicial, might not even survive the orphanage. In Theodore global and liberal were positively correlated with Dreiser’s Sister Carrie, the girl makes it big, but scholastic aptitude of math. The gifted children then falls hard - she can’t change who she is: a proved to be more legislative, judicial and poor, country girl. liberal than non gifted children. but less executive. METHODOLOGICAL NATURALISM NATURALISM: MAJOR WORKS Methodological naturalism is said to be concerned not with claims about what exists but with methods Now imagine this kind of documentary where it’s of learning what nature is. It is claimed to be not a deer but a human. That’s the essence of strictly the idea that all scientific endeavors-all naturalism, a literary movement from the late 19th hypotheses and events-are to be explained and and early 20th centuries. I don’t mean that people tested by reference to natural causes and events, are getting eaten by tigers in these stories (at least, though by definition it adopts a bias against the not normally), but they are analyzed like animals in supernatural by ruling out such possibilities in a documentary. advance. The genesis of nature (for example, by an act of God) is not addressed. This second sense of One of the pioneers of the movement, French naturalism seeks only to provide a framework author Emile Zola, summed it up well with the title within which to conduct the scientific study of the of his 1890 novel, The Human Beast. In naturalism, laws of nature. Methodological naturalism is a way humans are analyzed like any other beast. Before of acquiring knowledge. It is a distinct system of we dive deeper into what defines naturalism as a thought concerned with a cognitive approach to movement, let’s touch on some of the major writers reality, and is thus a philosophy of knowledge. and works. In addition to Zola, many American Studies by sociologist Elaine Ecklund suggest that authors wrote amazing naturalistic novels and religious scientists in practice apply stories. methodological naturalism. They report that their religious beliefs affect the way they think about the ELEMENTS OF NATURALISM implications - often moral - of their work, but not the way they practice science. You might have noticed a trend here. That gets us to exploring the elements of naturalism in more THEORIES OF NATURALISM detail. Naturalism emerged shortly after realism. The two styles have a few things in common. Both Alvin Plantinga strive to depict the world in an honest, straightforward fashion during a period covering Alvin Plantinga, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy roughly the 1880s through to World War II. You at Notre Dame, and a Christian, has become a well- had romanticism before then, full of symbolism, known critic of naturalism. He suggests, in his supernatural elements and high emotion. Both evolutionary argument against naturalism, that the naturalism and realism stripped all that artifice probability that evolution has produced humans away to get at the real world. with reliable true beliefs, is low or inscrutable, unless their evolution was guided (for example, by God). According to David Kahan of the University 2 of Glasgow, in order to understand how beliefs are lies, however slightly indicated, in the child, and warranted, a justification must be found in the can be attained only through development from context of supernatural theism, as in Plantinga’s within outward.” Rousseau popularized the epistemology. (See also supernormal stimuli). idealistic idea that children overall are good. They are born with a good nature, so they naturally want Plantinga argues that together, naturalism and to do good things. Many recent influential people evolution provide an insurmountable “defeater for have also taken up idealistic thought. W.T Harris the belief that our cognitive faculties are reliable”, was a superintendent of a public