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When we open our eyes and look about the world, we often assume that what we see is what we get. We assume that grass really is green, and that violets are blue, in more or less the way they visually appear to be. And similarly for the other senses. In the early modern period (roughly, the 17th and 18th centuries), European philosophers increasingly problematize this assumption. Some philosophers—such as René Descartes, Nicolas Malebranche, Robert Boyle, and John Locke—argue for a radical disconnect between the world presented by our senses and the way it really is. These figures argue that the colourful, smelly, tasty, and noisy world with which we are all familiar is a grand illusion, and that physical reality is in fact colourless, odourless, tasteless, and silent, composed of purely quantitative objects. Other philosophers—such as Margaret Cavendish and George Berkeley—try to rescue something of our naïve understanding of the world, and to save the greenness of grass and the blueness of violets, though they twist themselves into metaphysical knots in the process. This module will investigate the thorny early modern debate between these two camps. By the end of this module you will have gained knowledge of some of the key arguments and theories of early modern philosophy, developed your skills in reading, discussing, and writing critically about challenging texts—and you will be a much better position to decide whether a tree falling in a forest makes a sound.Ìý

Philosophy Area C