Ep 159: Knowledge and Ignorance Part 2
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The Enlightenment Philosophy of Bacon and Descartes
Popper: The optimistic epistemology of Bacon and Descartes cannot be true. Yet perhaps the strangest thing in this story is that it was the major inspiration of an intellectual and moral revolution without parallel in history. It encouraged men to think for themselves. It gave them hope that through knowledge they might free themselves, and others, from servitude and misery. This made modern science possible. It became the basis of the fight against censorship and the suppression of free thought. In a passage I find unparalleled amongst so many other modern philosophers, contemporaries of Popper, much less people that came later. There's nothing this inspiring until you get to David Deutsch.
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