Post on Rationalism Coming Soon

  I have been trying to work on a decent post on the Empiricism vs. Rationalism topic.  Unfortunately I have been struggling with computer problems and the need to generate a little income.  I want to lay a little groundwork by outlining the problem with the use of the word "rational".  The word rational is commonly used to mean the same thing as the word "logical".  People then see the word "Rationalism" and think that it means being "rational" or "logical", which it does not.  Rationalism is a philosophy which starts with "a priori" concepts, which are supposed to be self evident truths which are derived by "pure reason" without resort to observation.  Logical deduction is used to derive various theories from these a priori  concepts (also known as "first principles"). Empiricism is the opposed school of philosophy which demands that the first principles be based on observation, and then uses the same logical deduction to arrive at theories about reality.

I personally think that modern science has shown that Rationalism is, in fact, irrational. Many people have come to call their selves Rationalists because they choose to re-define the term. The term has also become somewhat associated (mostly by the same people) with the faith of Atheism.

Rationalism gave us Euclidean Geometry, which is a pretty good approximation for most purposes. Euclidean geometry, however, is only an approximation and fails miserably on both the atomic and the cosmic scales. Euclidean geometry (coupled with Newtonian Physics) can give a very good prediction of the orbit of the Earth about the sun, and the orbits of all of the planets except Mercury.  The geometry of General Relativity is needed to accurately predict the orbit of Mercury.

The concept that we need to come away with is that faulty first principles coupled with faultless logical deduction will lead to faulty conclusions.  Most so-called rationalists fail to understand that their "self evident" truths are not self-evident.