English Coursework

English coursework writing is almost the same as English essay writing. In particular, your English coursework should include an introduction with a thesis statement, main body with supporting details and evidence from secondary sources, and finally conclusion with a summary of the main findings. English coursework length may vary depending on teacher’s requirements but you must always keep in mind that your task is develop the topic fully! I have posted a sample English coursework on Descartes and Aristotelianism here to give an idea on coursework writing. In addition, do not forget to read great tips on writing biology coursework and English GCSE coursework written by professional coursework writers for free!

English Coursework Sample

Although Descartes thought that his philosophical and scientific doctrines subverted Aristotelianism and scholasticism, he was at heart a scholastic or Aristotelian because he drew from his own mind propositions about the nature of being and reality. Perhaps for this very reason his writings influenced the seventeenth century more extensively than the researches of those who drew truths from observation and experimentation--sources that were wholly at variance with the traditional ones. However, because he discussed nearly all the physical problems of his day, his speculation became the ferment which induced the gradual clarification of these problems during the next century. Descartes taught men to think for themselves, and this was his greatest contribution. Pupilage to antiquity or to authority was rejected.

But Galileo and Newton did not begin with basic truths. They inferred general principles from experience, and did not presuppose an ultimate metaphysical foundation for them. The fact was original, not the principle. Thus the new method of science stressed experience as the prime source, and yet the mind obtained truths in the form of broad mathematical principles. How did the mind obtain those truths? Every philosopher of the Age of Reason offered his own theory of knowledge. We shall examine a few representative views, primarily to see how philosophers and scientists attempted to embrace the new roles of experience and mathematics and to sanction the new truths.

In his Essay Concerning Human Understanding ( 1690), John Locke ( 1632-1704) undertook to determine the origin, certainty, and extent of human knowledge. Unlike Descartes, he begins by asserting that there are no innate ideas in men; they are born with minds as empty as blank tablets. Experience, through the medium of the sense organs, writes on those passive tablets and produces simple ideas. Some of these are exact images of qualities actually inherent in bodies, namely, the primary qualities of solidity, extension, figure (shape), motion or rest, and number. Other ideas produced by sensations are the effects of the real properties of objects on the mind, but do not correspond to actual properties. These sensations are the secondary qualities of color, taste, smell, and sound. God did not endow us with truths, but gave us faculties which enable us to discover all we need to know, namely, the faculties of sensation and reflection. Although the mind cannot invent or frame any simple ideas, it does have the power to reflect on, compare, distinguish, and unite simple ideas, and thus form complex ideas.