History and Context of Journalism - Lecture Two Notes

Today was my second lecture about the history and context of journalism. Prior to this lecture I read Bertrand Russel's History of Western Philosophy, book three, part one, chapters 1-9. When reading these chapters I found them to be quite confusing and found myself highlighting what I considered to be key sentences in order to help my understanding of particular pages. However after the lecture today I am now more confident in my understanding of the text and hopefully these notes will reflect this!

I will start by very briefly summarizing each chapter that I read in order to ensure that I have grasped Russell's basic concepts, as well as for reference in the future.

Chapter one: General Characteristics

• This chapter was largely an overview to book three.
• The shift from authority of the church to the authority of science is discussed, claiming that the rise of scientific authority was linked to 'its intrinsic appeal to reason'
• Russell highlights the difference between theoretical and practical science.
• Theoretical science is used to try and understand the physical world
• Practical science is used to try and change the world
• Russell explains how in the Dark Ages the scholastic, Aristotelian society controlled by the church was suppressive.
• The Renaissance allowed for 'freedom from mental shackles', people were able to express new and innovative developments of ideas and knowledge.
• A positive attribute of a scientific authority is highlighted as being that it is ethically neutral - informing people what they are and are not able to do instead of telling people what they should or should not do.

Chapter two: The Italian Renaissance

• Italy had five important states; Milan, Venice, Florence, the Papal Domain and Naples
• The chapter mentions the importance of all five states, although it becomes clear that Florence was at the centre of the Italian Renaissance.
• Russell explains how states were usually governed by the wealthiest families and that power was hereditary
• The Medici family were in control of Florence
• The Italian Renaissance ended when popes become religious figures
• Civil wars in Italy at the time were largely bloodless until in 1492 when the French invaded and surprised Italians by killing people in battle.
• The Renaissance was not a popular on a mass scale, instead it appealed to a niche audience of artists and scholars.
• Architecture, poetry and painting flourished and developed during the Renaissance
• Leonardo, Machiavelli and Michelangelo were products of the Renaissance

Chapter three: Machiavelli

• Niccolo Machiavelli 1467-1527
• Machiavelli was an incredibly important figure of political philosophy
• His magnum opus was The Prince which he dedicated to Lorenzo the second
• The Prince was somewhat of an instructional book on how to obtain and secure positions of power.
• He upholds the belief that there is a place for religion in the State as a form of social cement
• He strongly believed that it was essential to get and keep power by any means necessary

Chapter four: Eramus and more

• Eramus and Sir Thomas More were figures associated with the northern Renaissance.
• Eramus lived 1466-1536
• Eramus was an intellectual and a skilled writer
• His book The Praise of Folly is the only piece of his work which is still read
• Sir Thomas More lived 1478-1535
• More's magnum opus is Utopia in which he describes an island where everything is done in the best way, in his opinion.
• He stresses the importance of equality and having 'all things held in common'

Chapter five: The Reformation and Counter-Reformation

• Russell claims that roughly speaking the Reformation was German, and the Counter-Reformation was Spanish
• At the time Spain and Germany were considered, rightly so, to be less civilized and intellectual that Italy
• The Reformation and Counter-Reformation sparked secular thinking and learning.

Chapter six: The rise of science 

• Hugely important scientific advances took place during the seventeenth century.
• Scientific advances gave rise to modern philosophy
• Rene Descartes is considered to be the father of modern philosophy
• Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and Newton were incredibly important in the creation of science as we understand it now
• Copernicus was one of the leading figures in astronomy, putting forward the idea that the Earth is not at the centre of the universe.
• Kepler discovered three laws of planetary motion: (i) the plants describe elliptic orbits, of which the sun occupies one focus (ii) the line joining a planet to the sun sweeps out equal areas in equal times (iii) the square period of revolution of a planet is proportional to the cube of its average distance from the sun
• Galileo is noted for discovering the importance of acceleration
• Newton was innovative in his three laws of motion and law of universal gravitation

Chapter seven: Francis Bacon

• 1561-1626
• Francis Bacon is noted as being the founder of the modern inductive method
• He has been closely linked as being the originator of the saying Knowledge is power
• His magnum opus is The Advancement of Learning

Chapter eight: Hobbes' Leviathan

• 1588-1679
• Hobbes was inspired by Galileo and Kepler
• He worked from the viewpoint that reason should start from definitions
• He believed that all man were naturally equal
• He thought that communities were formed in order for people to escape the evils of force and fraud
• Self preservation is absolute, and that a man has no duty to a sovereign which has no power to protect him
• His morality was extremely clear and logical

The above chapter summaries are extremely brief and many of the concepts and key figures will be discussed further on in this blog!

I will now start my lecture notes in the order of which they were discussed. As well as copying up my notes I will also be mixing the discussed topics with my own opinions and development of ideas.

Aristotle

Aristotle is a key figure of the Renaissance in the sense that his scholastic ideals and theories were outdated and suppressive, which sparked a large amount of opposition. This opposition led people to express innovative new ideas and knowledge.  I think that this is typical example of human nature, if we are system which we think is flawed we will strive to think of a better one ourselves. People thought that living in an Aristotelian society was flawed and outdated so they tried to break free from it.

The Dark Ages

The Dark Ages, I learned today, were a time of social, religious, economical and intellectual decline. Society at the time was controlled largely by the Church, which held scholastic and Aristotelian views. The focus was on books, with people believing that the information in books should never be challenged. The development of new ideas and knowledge were non-existent, with people consuming the same old dogma that the Church fed them.

Florence

Florence was the centre of the Italian Renaissance, primarily to do with the amount of wealth there. The Medici family were in power, and as the wealthiest family at that time, were largely responsible for funding the Renaissance. Below is a small and very simplistic timeline of the Medici which I created using the information in Russells' book.

Their money was not earned honestly though, and one of the ways they made so much money was explained in the lecture. In Florence at that time it was illegal to charge interest on loans. The Medici family found a way around that problem by loaning out money to people in one currency, then making people pay the loan back in a different currency. This allowed them to charge interest under the illusion that it was simply a difference in currency. Whilst I understand how dishonest this was, I also think that this was an incredibly intelligent loophole to find!

If the Medici family had not been so wealthy it would not have been possible for the Renaissance to progress in the way that it did. For example, it would not have been possible to pay artists to innovative new styles and magnificent pieces of work.

Scientific Renaissance

Galileo was one of the key figures in the Scientific Renaissance. He followed Pythagorus' belief that the secrets of the universe could be revealed through numbers. He was concerned only with quantitative data, believing that qualitative data was largely irrelevant as it was subjective. He was an important figure in the Renaissance because he proved his theories about science and space. He built a telescope to prove that the earth orbited the sun. The fact that he had empirical evidence to back up his theory meant that his finding then became something which could not be challenged, unlike the ideals of the time that had no evidence supporting them. He proved the the Earth was not the centre of the universe, which was a direct attack on what Aristotle taught. Aristotle was one of the key figure in Christianity, so Galileo proving that something Aristotle taught was inaccurate meant that people started to wonder how much else of Aristotelian theology was incorrect. Until this point people felt that they had no reason to challenge what the Church presented as fact, so this was a huge shift in thinking at the time.

Machiavelli

Machiavelli was a diplomat in Florence and is often associated with the start of political science.He made all his judgements based on reality, learning from empirical evidence. His status as a diplomat was unusual as he was not from a family of high status. He held his high status until the Medici came back into power and exiled him because they thought he was involved in a plot to murder members of the Medici family. Whilst in exile Machiavelli wrote a book entitled The Prince, which he dedicated to Lorenzo the Magnificent. The book acted as a kind of "how to" book teaching people how to gain power and hold onto it. Machiavelli believed that you should get and keep power by any means necessary. The book did not tell people whether it was right or wrong to gain power, it simply told how it could be done.This was unusual in a time when being morally righteous was something that was taken very seriously.

Machiavelli is famously quoted for saying 'it is better to be feared than loved". He made it clear, however, that fear was desirable, not hate. He also said that if you had to perform 'evil' acts that they should all be done at the start, and preferably by someone else. Caesar Borgia was an example given in the lecture of someone who did this. When in power, Caesar hired a Governor to do all of his dirty work, which resulted in the Governor being hated by everyone. Once there was no more dirty work left to be done, Caesar had the Governor cut in half, and his body put in the town for everyone to see. This resulted in Caesar's popularity rising because he was seen by the people as the hero who saved them from an evil Governor. He did state that you could kill people but not take their land, claiming that people will forget a dead father sooner than they will forget the loss of land.

Machiavelli also advised that when there is any form of dispute you should always side with the weaker side, so that if you win you will then have the most authority. In the lecture we were given the example of America doing this in World War Two. Before America intervened, Germany was the stronger side and Britain the weaker. America sided with the weaker and ultimately ended up being the strongest as they were seen as saving the world from the Germans despite the years Britain had spent fighting them prior to America's involvement. So clearly Machiavelli's tactic is one that has proved to be a successful strategy!

Rene Descartes

In broad terms Rene Descartes is thought to have been the founder of modernity. He was a well educated man, but felt that his education had not been an advantage and instead had been a hindrance to him. He felt that the best way to learn about life was by travelling and experiencing different cultures first hand.

On his travels Descartes found that what one culture believed to be true could completely differ to the beliefs of another culture. He made these observations with a number of different cultures and came to the conclusion that you cannot rely on custom because there is no proof to what is being told or to what people believe.

Working from this belief he then began to dismantle everything that he believed to be true. He took everything and asked himself whether there was a possibility that it could be untrue - is there any doubt? If there was the possibility of doubt then Descartes claimed that this should be dismissed because there is not proof that it is true and so is not worth holding on to. Eventually he wittled down all the information he thought he knew to his senses. He claimed that although you think you can trust your senses, they can deceive you. For example, everyone has had a dream that seemed so real they thought it was reality. Descartes used this theory to question how do we know that we are not in a dream state constantly? What proof do we have that anything around us exists?

 He then came to ask himself the question of the validity of his own existence. If there was doubt to everything else which exists, what proof did he have that he existed? He then came to the conclusion that the very fact that he was able to think about and doubt his existence meant that he was thinking, and the fact that he was thinking meant that he must exist. He stated cogito ergo sum - I think therefore I am. This suggests the separation of the mind and body because the mind was able to doubt the body. It also put individuals at the centre of everything.
Descartes used this concept in order to prove the existence of God. He has the concept of God as being a perfect being, in contrast to a man who is an imperfect being. He questioned how can an imperfect being conceive an idea of a perfect being? He came to the conclusion that the idea of God must have been given to him by God because God created him. He also believed that God is good and not a deceiver, and Descartes senses were given by God, so they could be trused. Using this concept Descartes was able to rebuild everything that he had dismissed previously.

Cartesian doubt is a concept that is very relevant in todays society. People often doubt what they deem to be reality, and have taken it a step further by starting to deceive other people's concepts of reality. For example in 1938 CBS radio station broadcasted an hour long show directed by Orson Wells based on Orwell's novel The War of the Worlds. The broadcast was made to make it sound as if it was a news bulletin to make the public believe that aliens were actually invading Earth. The public were outraged by this trick because they genuinely believed what they were being told. This proves that people can be deceived by what they deem to be reality.



  Another perfect example of this is the film called The Truman Show which tells the story of a man who has lived his whole life in what he deemed to be reality, when in fact he was part of a television show. Below is the trailer of the film:



This concept has been repeated time and time again in the media. Other such films include The Matrix, Gamer and even television programmes such as Family Guy have used this idea. Reality television shows such as Big Brother also alter the concept of reality for contestants. Below is the trailer for The Matrix:



The fact that so many forms of media have used this concept and have been incredibly successful shows, in a way, human desire to question our reality. This desire dates back thousands of years, as shown by Plato's cave analagy. Do we all posess an innate sense of doubt? I have watched and listenened to all the examples that I have mentioned and will admit that after watching them I do begin to question my own existence. I find it incredibly interesting to consider the concept that everything I think is real could infact be the figment of my imagination, or for that matter that I too could be the figment of someone elses imagination. Why is quuestioning our existence in this way so intreiging? Do we really want to believe in a reality outside our own? If we were given proof would we even believe that? Perhaps it is simply due to the society we live in, where the idea of escapism is appealing because it puts less pressure on us - if we do not really exist then what does it matter what choices we make? This of couse is an extreme and dangerous view to uphold as it leaves the door open to any kind of behaviour. I, like everyone else, have no proof that the world I consider to be reality is anything more than a dream but it is the belied that we are in reality which holds societies together, leaving little room for Descartes' extreme levels of doubt.